Whether you call it cocoa or hot chocolate - it is a winter treat, and one of the few rewards of living through the arctic temperatures that occur occasionally in this corner of the globe!

Hot Chocolate or Cocoa?

So IS there a difference between hot chocolate and cocoa?  Technically yes - cocoa is made from cocoa powder and sugar, while hot chocolate is made from melted bars of chocolate.  Both are mixed with hot milk to make a decadent beverage.

Most cocoa mixes have powdered milk in the mix already so they CAN be made with hot water, but are creamier and generally tastier when made with milk.

Cocoa bombs have been all the rage for the last few years. These are hollow chocolate candy balls filled with cocoa mix and sometimes also marshmallows. The idea is that you pour the hot milk over the '“bomb” in a mug and it melts the chocolate and dissolves the mix, giving you essentially a combination of hot chocolate and cocoa.

It’s a clever idea and recipes for homemade chocolate bombs abound. The idea is appealing, and I may have even ordered the silicone molds at some point, but I never got around to making them. They are just too finicky with too many steps and too many options for the whole thing to go awry.

I decided a straight up delicious hot cocoa mix that contained some ground chocolate was the best of all worlds - much easier to produce, and just as tasty.

I set out to make my own cocoa mix so I could A.) use it for gift giving, and B.) get a better taste than the commercially available mixes.

The Hunt for the Best Cocoa Recipe

I first went to Serious Eats, one of my favorite websites for heavily researched recipes and found a recipe for a cocoa mix. 

It contained a fair number of ingredients including pure ground vanilla bean powder for which, it turns out, you might need to take out a second mortgage on your home (like all real vanilla products, it’s pricey!)…

And it had a number of steps including making toasted sugar to add to the mix.  Toasted sugar is made by toasting granulated sugar in the oven at a low enough temperature for a long enough time that it caramelizes without melting.

My patience is fairly low, so I only toasted mine about two hours.  I’m honestly not sure it’s necessary in the end for this mix. But it doesn’t hurt if you have the time and you can make a whole bunch and use it in place of granulated sugar in any recipe for a deeper caramel flavor.  In my opinion, caramel flavor is NEVER a bad thing!

In eager anticipation, I tested the final product and it was good, and it was plenty chocolatey…BUT not really sweet enough to suit me.

Adding homemade Irish cream to the finished cup of cocoa helped, as that is super sweet, but I went back and added about 50% more of the toasted sugar to the mix for good measure.

I compared a variety of other recipes and some contained milk powder, some used powdered sugar, several contained ground white chocolate.  The one I had made contained both ground white chocolate and ground dark chocolate.

The commercial mix I liked best listed the ingredients as containing caramel and vanilla flavors, granulated sugar, and Dutch process cocoa powder.  That made the decision to stick with the toasted sugar easy, and to keep the powdered vanilla bean as well.

The Serious Eats recipe also contained malted milk powder rather regular milk powder and I liked the malted flavor, though I thought it needed more of it.  I liked the addition of white chocolate as well for the added creaminess and sweetness.

I made my new mix with those things in mind and then we had a side by side blind cocoa tasting to compare the original recipe I made with its added sugar, vs my new mix.

Both were good, and quite similar, but my new blend slightly edged out the original - there were only two of us weighing in, but we both agreed it tasted a bit smoother and creamier somehow.

Please note: this post contains affiliate links meaning I may make a small commission on any purchases at no additional cost to you.

SO here is the resulting recipe from my own kitchen:

NestFeathers Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix

Ingredients

• 8 oz white chocolate (I used Ghirardelli bars) broken up into chunks

• 1 1/2 cup Dutch process cocoa powder

• 2 cups toasted sugar (recipe from Serious Eats)

• 1 cup malted mik powder

• 1 tsp pure vanilla powder

• 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt

Directions

• Add white chocolate chucks to the bowl of a food processor and grind until fine

• Add remaining ingredients to the food processor and mix thoroughly

• Store in a cool dry place in a sealed container.  Keeps until the expiration date on the white chocolate (usually around a year, but it won’t be around that long anyway!)

To Use

• Add 2 Tbsp cocoa mix to a mug

• Heat 6 oz of milk (you could also substitute oat, coconut, or almond milk, I presume…but why??)

• Pour a little bit of hot milk into the mug and stir into a paste to dissolve the mix, add the remaining milk and stir, or better yet, whirl with a frother!  I LOVE my frother!

• For extra decadence, top with a splash of Irish whiskey and homemade marshmallows (recipes linked below)

Homemade Baileys takes less than 5 minutes to make and you can adjust the booze and sweetness to your liking!

Homemade Irish cream

(From Smitten Kitchen)

Whisk together 1 tsp cocoa powder with splash of heavy or whipping cream until dissolved, whisk in remaining cup of cream a little at a time, whisk in 1  14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk, 1 cup of inexpensive whiskey, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Easy peasy and delicious!  Also about 1/4 of the cost of buying Bailey’s.  We should ALWAYS have this in the house!

Homemade Marshmallows

I had never made homemade marshmallows but they are supposed to be easy.  I followed Deb's instructions from Smitten Kitchen.

The recipe contains two things that make me nervous…gelatin, and a candy thermometer (for this I used my favorite instant read thermometer).  I have a love hate relationship with any candy making that requires a thermometer.    

Marshmallows are a bit of a sticky messy project, but they really are pretty foolproof. I managed just fine and they worked beautifully!

And the clean up is easy enough - sugar dissolves in water after all…

I think making these without a standing mixer would be quite tedious, if not impossible, but they are melt-in-your-mouth delectable and superior to commercial marshmallows in every way!

They could also be flavored with peppermint extract, or colored for additional fun.  I prefer classic so I did not, but there are a lot of possibilities!

I cut mine into squares with a pizza wheel as suggested, but if I had had a star cookie cutter, that would have been adorable albeit a little wasteful of the scraps (I did order this set of stars and hearts cutters so…next time…)

The marshmallows have lasted well in a sealed container for a couple of weeks now.  I’d like to try making larger, thicker ones for toasting over the fire pit sometime to see how that works!

Gourmet Cocoa Gifts from the Kitchen

I packaged my cocoa mix and Irish cream in these cute jars to give as gifts over the holidays.  The jars came with string and small tags. I used the string to tie on these tags I designed and printed on card-stock and finished the jars with a plaid ribbon.

I included cellophane bags of homemade marshmallows along with our favorite gingerbread cookies for a complete “gourmet cocoa experience”! 

If gingerbread cookies are not your thing, these snowflake sugar cookies  or these snickerdoodles would be an excellent cocoa accompaniment too!

I am not a big fan of winter.  I hate to be cold, I don’t live for winter sports, and I despise the need to shovel just to to get in and out of the house.  I think about 2 weeks of winter would be just right, but alas I live in New England where we have the pleasure of 4 actual seasons, but winter seems to hog more than its fair share of the calendar.

Winter is so much nicer sitting inside next to the fire with a cup of Irish cream laced cocoa while looking out at the pretty snow frosted trees through a window!

I highly recommend you whip up some cocoa mix and homemade Irish cream to keep on hand to make the long winter days FAR more pleasant!