Sinead's Most Excellent Hot Chocolate

I made an adaptation of Sinead's amazing hot chocolate recipe for my family this christmas. It was a big hit. I'll put the recipe I used below. Please bear in mind that everywhere where my recipe is different from Sinead's is because I didn't have the ingredients or equipment available to me.* I make no claim that my modifications are improvements.

I don't have a soy milk maker so I just boiled 2 cups of ground almond in 8 cups of water while I mortar and pestled the spices, which were: 8 cloves, 2-3 tsp anisseed, 1/3 of a cinnamon stick. The almonds and water got extremely foamy and never really got to a rolling boil. I dumped the ground spices in and added one chopped vanilla bean and one dried chili pepper. I cooked this, stirring, for about five minutes and then let it sit about 12 hours in the cold garage. The next day I strained the liquid with cheesecloth and returned it to the pot. I heated it up on the stove while I broke up two bars of Green & Black's 70% and one bar of Terra Nostra's 73%. Then I dissolved about 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder and the chocolate in the liquid. Serve to suspicious relatives, some of whom will turn it down because it's "not healthy" (and never mind the Cinnamon Toast Crunch they have for breakfast).

---

*Except the cocoa, which I increased because I was doubling the recipe in my head as I went along and got mixed up.