Starbucks Mint Hot Chocolate

There are two kind of mint hot chocolate and this is the better one. What makes one better than the other? Well, and I'm dropping names here like some old tart that lived it up in the rock scene of the dirty, dirty seventies. Tim Horton's mint hot chocolate is a pretty pathetic, although accurate, portrayal of the model. It is the same hot chocolate that they would serve you if you ordered it any other time of the year but with one, unwrapped little secret. They drop a starlight mint in there. It's, and I don't mean to offend anyone with this, a pretty "poor person's" mint chocolate.

Now I am quite sure that Starbucks uses some fancy syrup to both sweeten and flavor their drink. Whatever they use, it doesn't make the drink taste:
A: Like candy in an otherwise basic drink.
B: Like toothpaste.

These two "nots" together add up to a decent mint hot chocolate. It is strong but not as strong as I like to think that Starbucks drinks are. It's a good, heavy cup of hot chocolate made with more decent ingredients than your powder garbage in the cupboard. I don't know what the Italian name for the twelve-or-so ounce cup I had was, but it was about the maximum I could have taken. I love chocolate and I love hot chocolate but add mint in there and it cuts my kid-like ability to eat endless amounts of chocolate down significantly. It was, while it lasted, a very good drink, though. Now I didn't buy it but I'm sure that I would not have been fully comfortable at whatever the purchase price was but hey, I don't make a lot of money and therefore will buy many more "poor person" renditions of drinks than someone in tax brackets above mine will. Jay and I live well beneath our means and that includes frivolous purchases like five-dollar small hot chocolates. I downright don't think I'm worth it but that's my own internal struggle I've got to deal with.