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Frugal hot chocolate mix
Posted on December 14th, 2008 14 comments
Why buy hot chocolate mix when you can make it yourself? Yesterday, we whipped up a batch following Alton Brown’s recipe.
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 cup cocoa (Dutch-process preferred)
- 2 1/2 cups powdered milk
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons cornstarch
- 1 pinch cayenne pepper, or more to taste
- Hot water
Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and incorporate evenly. We actually used a food processor - trying to mix it in a bowl was just too messy and too difficult with this much powder!
We also cut up some marshmallows we had and put them in too. However the key is to add the marshmallows at the end. They nearly exploded in the food processor!
In a small pot, heat 4 to 6 cups of water.
Fill your mug half full with the mixture and pour in hot water. Stir to combine. Seal the rest in an airtight container, keeps indefinitely in the pantry. This also works great with warm milk.
It’s tasty and much cheaper than buying pre-packaged hot chocolate in the store. You can make this recipe even cheaper by buying some of your ingredients at the Bulk Barn or other bulk foods or baking stores.
14 responses to “Frugal hot chocolate mix”
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Catherine December 14th, 2008 at 13:31
Hope you don’t mind my sharing……is that allowed here?
My family’s favourite hot chocolate is Michael Smith’s recipe:
2 cups of milk
2 tbsp of dutch processed cocoa
2 tbsp of brown sugar
1 heaping tbsp of ground coffee
1 tsp vanilla extract
Heat all ingredients in a small saucepan and whisk until steaming.
Strain and pour into 2 mugs.
AWESOME! -
Saver Queen December 14th, 2008 at 13:41
Sounds delish! Thanks for sharing! Of course, I love it when my readers share their own tips!
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Great website, I just found it!
My boyfriend does the same thing. He previously was spending more money than I think I should mention on getting 20 oz. mochas (often more than once a day!). A few months ago we started trying to spend less. He does something similar - he makes a spicy hot chocolate mix and adds it to coffee at work. He calls it his “cheap man’s mocha.” I’m not quite sure what he puts in it, but he uses some premium fair-trade chocolate mix, some form of hot (lately it’s been ghost chilis), and keeps it at work.
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Saver Queen December 14th, 2008 at 15:39
Debtmaven - so cute! “cheap man’s mocha” - i love it!
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Kristine December 14th, 2008 at 22:58
I actually like the darker chocolate taste so I use vanilla soymilk, add some cocoa powder, whisk and heat. It is fab and easy to make.
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Wow! I love hot cocoa and so does my wife and kids. I never even thought about trying to make a batch of powder from scratch. I’m going to give this a shot tomorrow! Great tip.
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Not quite sure my post didn’t get through - frustrating - but I’ll retype.
I wrote why bother with all the “unnecessary crap” when you can keep things nice and simple.
I use this recipe from the Fry’s Cocoa container - I should note though that this is more for the dark chocolate lovers as it’s not nearly as sweet as the “commercial” stuff.2 TBSP sugar
1 TBSP cocoa
1 TBSP milk - used to mix sugar & cocoa
1 Cup milk (or milk alternative if you choose)- the main liquidPut sugar, cocoa and TBSP milk together and stir until you get a syrup consistency. Heat up milk, then pour into mixture. Simple and tasty!
What I’ve been doing to reduce the sugar/calorie count is use 1 TBSP brown sugar instead of 2 TBSP sugar, and instead of 1 cup milk, I use 1/3 water + 2/3 milk (but honestly, I use a little more than a cup). Perhaps not as indulgent, but gets the job done.
For a bit of caffeine, throw in 1/2 TBSP instant coffee into mixture. Hope that works for people.
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omg! i want to make my own hot chocolate now!
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Thanks for sharing and linking up, can’t wait to try this!
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I’m going to make this. I bought the kids a cocomotion machine and need some mix to go with it. The one I used to make had a jar of non-dairy creamer in it. This one sounds better.
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