It won’t be long before I bring down candles and “cobwebs” out of the attic for Halloween. Maybe it’s because I’m longing for a New England September, or maybe it’s the slight nip in the air today, but I just had to indulge myself in a cup of home-made hot chocolate.

Hot chocolate was one of the many discoveries of the New World during the Columbian Exchange. And Europeans didn’t come across silky-sweet nougats and chews wrapped in velveteen boxes. What they found was hot chocolate — a drink considered so potent by the Aztecs that it was reserved for royalty and religious ceremonies. (Montezuma purportedly used it as an aphrodisiac and as a sort of old-world Viagra.)

The first people most likely to have cultivated the cacao tree were the Olmecs, from the Southern coast of Mexico, according to food writer (and demi-god) Harold McGee. From there it spread to Mayan and Aztec cultures; the latter roasted the beans and ground them for use in hot chocolate. They made a paste of the roasted beans, then added spices and hot water.

Numerous accounts of the drinking of cacahuatl (the Nahuatl, or Aztec, word for hot chocolate) abound: foaming broths mixed with human blood, golden cups filled with froth and spices such as vanilla (another New World discovery), wild honey and red achiote.

The Spanish took the drink back to Spain, and for nearly 200 years did little to expand on it, other than add sugar, cinnamon, chiles, saffron and orange. By then they had adopted the Native American custom of making a paste of the roasted beans and cocoa butter, then drying it on leaves to make tablets. Native Americans used the tablets by adding hot water or atole (a kind of hot gunk made of maize) — the first cocoa mix, so to speak.

By the mid-1600s, hot chocolate had spread from Spain to France and England, where new, innovative “coffeehouses” were selling the drink to droves, especially when someone — and no one really knows who — decided to start making it with hot milk instead of water.

But I’m so glad she did: hot chocolate is one of the most warming, rewarding — and easy — things to whip up. Here’s one of my oldest recipes for the steamy stuff (it originally ran in the AJC’s food section).

Spanish Hot Chocolate

4 to 6 servings

Hands on: 20 minutes

Total time: 20 minutes

This drink is luscious, decadent and laced with spices inspired by Latin America and Spain: cinnamon, saffron, vanilla and Anaheim peppers. Made with ganache (a mixture of heavy cream, chocolate and butter), you can make it double decadent by adding a dollop of chantilly cream or a homemade marshmallow.

8 ounces heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon saffron threads

1 stick cinnamon

Zest of 1 orange

1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla bean (split lengthwise, scrape the pulp into the mixture and remove the bean)

1 Anaheim chile, cut in half lengthwise with seeds removed (serrano can be substituted, if desired)

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

In a medium saucepan, heat the cream on high heat with the saffron, cinnamon, orange zest, vanilla bean and pepper without stirring until it comes to a scald. Remove from the heat and strain. Add the chocolate and return to low heat, whisking vigorously until smooth. Whisk in the butter.