Homemade Hot Chocolate Mix

I have been making my own hot chocolate mix for about four years now. Originally, I just thought it would be fun to make it for us to have on cold winter nights, so put it in a huge canister and we enjoy it all winter long. But after a couple of years of making this, I decided to make an extra batch to give as fun little gifts. This is really cute in a seasonally decorated cellophane bag or a jar, topped with a few marshmallows and maybe even a few chocolate chips.

This makes a huge batch, so I usually share it with my mom because Tim and I can’t go through that much hot chocolate in one winter by ourselves. Just to gild the lily, I like to add some peppermint mocha coffee creamer to mine. Tim likes a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar on his. Yum!

This year I changed up my recipe a little. My old recipe used a premixed chocolate milk powder, but this one uses more cocoa powder and powdered sugar. I do like this one better. It just seems a little richer and more decadent. There’s also a little trick I tried this year, and that is to put the powdered milk in the food processor to turn it into a really fine powder. I do find that helps the mix dissolve into the liquid better. Since there’s already powdered milk in the mix, I make my hot chocolate with water, but for extra creaminess, you could use milk.

Whether you make this for your family or decide to share it with friends and neighbors, I hope you like it!

• 1 box of powdered milk – 10 cups
• 1 2 lb. bag of powdered sugar
• 2 cups of powdered coffee creamer
• 2 cups of good quality unsweetened cocoa powder (I used about 1.5 cups of milk chocolate and .5 cup of dark chocolate…and then a little extra just because)

Directions:

In the food processor, pulse the powdered milk until it’s a fine powder. Get the biggest bowl you have and add the powdered milk, powdered sugar, and coffee creamer. Sift in the cocoa powder. Carefully mix with a large spoon until well combined.

I use a heaping 1/4 cup of mix (okay, about 1/3 of a cup of mix) to one mug of hot water. Top with marshmallows if desired.

Enjoy!