The Conversation
The best part of the holiday season is putting on your coziest clothes and snuggling up to your loved ones with a cup of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate to keep you warm. Our twist on hot chocolate comes in the form of a candy-filled hot chocolate bar. This is great for any winter night in, but could also work nicely as a Christmas dessert when everyone is full from dinner.
Ingredients:
– hot chocolate
– chocolate chips or baking chocolate
– sprinkles
– whipped cream
Optional (choose whatever candies or toppings you like!)
– marshmallows
– peanut butter chips
– white chocolate chips
– york peppermint patties, broken up
– butterfinger, crushed
– cinnamon sticks
– nutella
– oreos, broken up
– Bailey’s
– Kahlua
First thing to do is to create your scrumptious chocolate-dipped spoons. First, put a bag of chocolate chips or baking chocolate into a small pot – we used a butter warmer. Add half a tablespoon of vegetable oil and cook on medium. Stir while cooking with a spatula. The consistency should be fairly thick, but smooth.
Dip your spoon in, shake off excess chocolate (the spoon should not be dripping), add sprinkles (or crushed candy cane, crushed Oreos, etc) and set down on parchment paper to cool. To speed up the process, you can place them in the fridge or freezer. If you don’t have time for this, use Nutella instead! For our hot chocolate day, we put finished spoons out on a plate but they also make great gifts if you wrap them in parchment paper with a ribbon.
Next, heat up your hot chocolate and set up your hot chocolate bar. When you make your hot chocolate, make it weaker than usual, since you’ll be sweetening it up with a cornucopia of sugary goodness.
For our fixin’s, we served Reese’s peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, broken up York Peppermint Patties, crushed Butterfinger, and marshmallows. We tossed the marshmallows in cinnamon and the tiniest bit of red chili pepper for a little kick. For drink stirrers, we used cinnamon sticks and our chocolate-dipped spoons, but candy canes would be perfect for making a drinkable Christmas dessert.
If you’re feeling like a little experimentation, heat up some caramel syrup and pour over whipped cream with a little bit of sea salt. So delicious.
For the grownups, add a little side bar with Kahlua and Baileys! And there you have it, a super simple, super sweet hot chocolate bar to add more than a little sugar to all your holiday festivities.