Hot Chocolate Bar

This weekend was our annual Breakfast with Santa.  A fun event we host for some of our neighbors.

You can read more about how this tradition started over at Your Homebased Parties.

Our menu for the party is the same every year – pancakes, little sausages, fruit, juice and hot chocolate.

Each year everyone raves about my hot chocolate.  It’s an old family recipe!  Not really, in fact it isn’t even a recipe it’s only a secret ingredient.

Believe it or not I use good old Nestle’s Hot Chocolate mix.  The trick is to be sure and use whole milk – no skim milk, no 2% – only whole milk!  The other secret ingredient is vanilla.  To one gallon of milk I add a couple of teaspoons of vanilla.  The combination of the the whole milk and vanilla create a rich and creamy hot chocolate that everyone loves and it’s easy!!

We always have lots of whip cream to go with the hot chocolate.  No limits – you can have as much as you want.

This year I decided to take it up a few notches after seeing Real Mom Kitchen’s post on Hot Cocoa and I put together a hot chocolate bar for the party.  It was a huge hit with kids and adults!

We had lots of fun mix ins and toppings.  We had candy canes dipped in white chocolate with white sprinkles to use as stirrers.

And then there were red, green and chocolate sprinkles!  I crushed up malted milk balls, peanut butter cups and Heath bar for yummy mix ins too!  And of course there were mini M & M’s.

What hot chocolate bar would be complete without whip cream – lots of whip cream.  There was also chocolate syrup, vanilla sugar and some Pirouette -rolled wafer cookies to dip and stir with.

And of course there were lots of marshmallows – mini and holiday shaped!

The kids, big and little had lots of fun putting together their hot chocolate creations!  We’re leaving the hot chocolate bar up for a few days. We’re going  caroling tonight with friends and will come back afterwards for more hot chocolate fun!