If you are looking for a delightful edible Christmas present then may I present these Hot Chocolate Christmas Baubles! In each bauble is a hand blended mix to make a big mug of delicious hot chocolate (or even two!). There are White Chocolate & Mint Christmas Baubles, Milk Chocolate & Peanut Butter Christmas Baubles and Dark Chocolate Caramel Christmas Baubles. This is a pushy and fun recipe Dear Reader!
A few years ago I made some macaron baubles and still had some fillable Christmas bauble containers. I saw this idea at a shop and thought that they were adorable but also super easy to make your own version of them.
This hot chocolate bauble idea is very versatile and customisable. Some people are team white, milk or dark chocolate. My personal preference is actually a 50/50 mix of milk and dark chocolate but you can make these to cater to your friends' personal tastes. I've given three recipes: the first is white chocolate with pink marshmallows and crushed up candy canes. The second one is inspired by a peanut butter cup in hot chocolate form with milk chocolate and peanut butter chocolate bits and the third blends dark or bittersweet chocolate with tiny caramels.
Tips for Making Hot Chocolate Christmas Baubles
1 - I always grind up as much of the chocolate as possible so that it melts easily. To make these, just add them to a mug of milk. The only one that needs to be made on the stovetop is the caramel one to ensure that the caramels melt.
2 - If you really want to make this extra special you can use Belgian chocolate. To be honest though this really works with all chocolate. I prefer to use chocolate bits and not melts because chocolate bits contain cocoa butter and melts contain vegetable oil.
3 - I add 60g or 2 ozs of ground chocolate to each bauble which is enough for one of those gigantic, biiiiig mugs of hot chocolate.
4 - Make sure to seal these up well with tape because hot chocolate mix everywhere makes a mess especially if people hang them from a tree.
When I was much younger I used to think that home-made food wasn't as good as food that you bought at a shop. But over the years I realised that it is the opposite. A lot of big brands cut costs through using cheaper ingredients and use preservatives to increase the shelf life and alter the taste of things. It's also much more expensive to buy something like this than to make it yourself (and if something is too cheap, well you have to wonder why!).
I promise that you can get these these hot chocolate baubles done in 10 minutes, pinky swear! I'm giving baubles to all of my closest friends tailored to each of their tastes. Over the last few weeks I've been buying Christmas presents for all of my friends and they've been steadily arriving by post. Every day our doorbell rings and more boxes arrive. Even my builder Peter who is doing our floors noticed this.
"You get enough packages don't you?" said Peter laughing as I dragged in three boxes cavewoman style; they were too heavy to carry in. I had to tell him that I have hardly spent any time at a shopping mall or shopping centre. I don't have the patience to deal with parking or queues so I have bought pretty much everything online. I bought everything in early December from a list I had been adding to during the year when I noticed a friend commenting on something that they liked. I think avoiding the shops has been the only thing saving my sanity during this crazy time too!
So tell me Dear Reader, do you ever make handmade food gifts at Christmas? Are you an in person shopper or an online shopper?
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