Why a hot chocolate recipe?

Why not?

I am a little bit obsessed with chocolate and mint together.

OK. That’s a big fat lie.

I am HUGELY obsessed with chocolate and mint together. See these Chocolate Mint Brownies.

Oh, and I have a peppermint hazelnut clusters recipe coming soon.

I love this time of year. It’s an awesome excuse to make even more stuff with chocolate and peppermint together. Especially hot chocolate and peppermint. Yum, yum yum!

So when I got into Christmas present making mode a few weeks ago, the wheels in my brain focused on chocolate. (I have tons of apple cinnamon jam, apricot jam, apple butter and applesauce ready to give.)

And, since it is cold in most parts of the Northern Hemisphere, I thought, HOT chocolate. Now, how to make hot chocolate that is givable as a Christmas present? Hmmmm.

I started thinking about it. Hot Chocolate has been around for a long time, right? That means the original version isn’t the chemical-laden, preservative-mess that you get in a packet today. It has to be pretty simple. Right?

Research time!

Well, low and behold. It’s pretty gosh darn simple to make homemade hot chocolate. Therefore it would be pretty gosh darn simple to make it as Christmas presents.

But I needed to make it MY kind of hot chocolate if it is going to be given out. So………

How to add peppermint to it? I would just use peppermint extract if I was making it for myself cup-by-cup. But that would be weird and gloppy in a powder mix. So how do I get powdery peppermint?

There are lots of candy canes around this time of year. I just need to figure out how to crush them.

Well, pulverize them, really. Ah, yes, food processor.

I found two versions of candy canes I wanted to try. The regular little ones and these other ones that supposedly dissolve in hot liquid. You would think the ready-to-dissolve ones would crush easier, wouldn’t you? Um, no.

Trust me on this one. Just crush regular candy canes. Way easier.

And you can make as much of this as you want to give away or keep for yourself. It’s a great gift that you know people will use.

Well, if they like chocolate and peppermint together. You can also leave out the peppermint if your receivers are not fans. Enjoy!