Homemade Hot Chocolate Mix

It has been for. blessed. ever. since I posted a new recipe. It's not that I'm not cooking. Oh my goodness! I think I've cooked more new recipes in the last two months than my entire life put together! It's just that most have been from Dashing Dish, so I don't want to copy her stuff as though it's my own. (And I rarely deviate or make my own version of her food, so copying would be what I'm doing!)

But with all this lovely blustery weather we've had lately, I've been a hot cocoa drinking FOOL, so I thought I would share the mix I've been making! Yes, I know you can buy cocoa mix already created in lovely little canisters, but I'm a sucker for making my own mixes. (For everything.) I also have this grand dream of making my own little Shafferland recipe box of flavored hot cocoas, so I needed a good basic starting point from which to grow my recipe list.

If you look on Pinterest, you'll learn that about 465,000 people have the best homemade hot cocoa mix. It took me a substantial amount of time to pilfer through the majority of the bests to find what would work for me!

I learned there are basically two kinds of hot cocoa methods out there. One uses powdered milk so all you have to do is add hot water when you're ready to indulge. The other uses NO milk in the mix recipe and you add the mix to hot milk. Undoubtedly the second method is creamier, but the milk we like costs $4.00 for a half gallon, so I can't afford to add a mix to a whole big mug of milk very often. I opted to go the first route, and I have to say I think it's pretty tasty! (And I like knowing it doesn't have random additives I can't pronounce mixed in with the good stuff.)

Without further ado, here is my basic hot cocoa mix:

Hot Cocoa Mix

* 3 cups dry milk powder 

* 2 cups powdered sugar

* 1 1/2 cup cocoa powder

* 1 1/2 cup white chocolate chips

* 2 teaspoons vanilla powder

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl until well mixed. Add 1/3 of the mixture to a blender and blend until everything is finely ground into a powder. Repeat with remaining 2/3 of mixture. Remix the entire batch in the bowl to make sure all ingredients are evenly distributed. Store in airtight container.

** To prepare a single cup of cocoa, put 1/4 cup of the mix into a large mug and stir in 1 cup of hot water.

Additional Tips:

* I use nonfat milk powder because, well, do I really need to explain that? If you want a creamier (and probably tastier version) you can use a whole milk version of the milk powder. Or you could mix the two if you want more of a taste good/feel good version!

* In all my research of THE BEST recipes out there, I noticed a general consensus that Dutch process cocoa powder is key to making great homemade hot cocoa mix. People indicated it was less bitter than the standard cocoa powder you might use for other cooking. We ordered some off Amazon and it wasn't nearly as inexpensive as the regular cocoa powder I use for cooking, but it is good! I'll give it that! 

* I had never heard of vanilla powder before, but we purchased that on Amazon as well. It basically achieves a hint of vanilla flavor without adding liquid to the dry mix. 

* When you start mixing this together in the bowl, you'll have quite the assortment of ingredient sizes. From the big, dense white chocolate chips to the course milk powder to the fine powdered sugar...well, stir carefully or you'll have a cloud! This is the reason you need to put it in the blender and get everything the same size.

* I have tried doing this kind of blending in a regular, cheap blender and it did NOT work for me. We now have a Ninja (which I love more than I should) and THAT does the trick. About 30 seconds gets it to the perfect consistency. If you don't have a powerful blender, you might end up with chocolate chip sludge in the bottom and uneven powder sizes.

* When preparing your single cup, you can always add more than 1/4 cup of the mix if you like extra flavor (or if you have an extra large mug). You can also add some milk in with the water if you'd like it a bit creamier.

* Of course, whipped topping and marshmallows only add to the joy, right?

So when I'm not drinking coffee this winter, you can find me drinking this! :)