Dressing Up Your Drinks: Hot Chocolate Add-Ins

(photo from here)

Let me just preface this post by saying I’m pretty much obsessed with hot chocolate.  Every month and a half or so when I went home during my freshman year at Drake, I’d have my mom buy me a new can of hot chocolate mix and of chai tea latte mix.  I go through them at an embarrassing rate, but I figured hot chocolate would be a great thing to post on since I consume so much of it.

My absolute favorite hot chocolate of all time is Trader Joes’ Peppermint Hot Chocolate that they sell around Christmas in green cylindrical metal tins.  It’s full of slivers of actual chocolate and pepperminty bliss.  Get your hands on some if you can around the holidays because it’s a limited edition cult favorite, and it tends to sell out quickly.

For the most part though, I’m not too picky about my hot chocolate because it’s easy to dress it up.  You can make any packet of Swiss Miss hot chocolate taste gourmet if you jazz it up enough.  Here are some tricks I use to dress up my hot chocolate beyond your basic marshmallows and a few I’d like to try.

Hot Chocolate Add-Ins

1. Peppermint.  Whether you choose to go the old fashioned way and add candy canes to infuse in the peppermint flavor or whether you add peppermint extract or a shot of peppermint schnapps, peppermint has been associated with hot chocolate since pretty much forever.  It’s a traditional flavor for a reason-it complements hot chocolate beautifully.
2. Orange.  If you’ve never had a chocolate orange in your stocking around Christmas, you’ve had a deprived childhood.  “Santa” would always put a chocolate orange in my and my siblings’ stockings, and it was always my favorite part of my stocking each year.  To mimic the delicious flavors of a chocolate orange, you can add ½-1 tsp of orange extract to your hot chocolate or you can add orange zest if you’re making hot chocolate on the stove.  Add ¼ T of fresh orange zest for every ½ cup of hot cocoa and strain before serving to remove the rind.  Now you have a drinkable chocolate orange!
3. Cinnamon and/or cayenne pepper.  Now I’m not personally a huge fan of this one, but a lot of people like the “Mexican style” hot chocolate.  Add a pinch of each (1/2 tsp or so) to your cup of cocoa for a bit of a kick.
4. Booze.  I wouldn’t be adequately covering hot chocolate add-ins if I didn’t mention ways to spike your drink.  Baileys Irish Cream is always a safe option, as is amaretto for that nutty flavor.  You can basically add any flavor of liquor you’d like, from Chambord to give your cocoa a fruity edge to Malibu which my grandma swears by to infuse a little coconut flavor.
5. Pumpkin.  While I’ve never personally tried pumpkin hot chocolate, this one definitely caught my eye.  Maybe it’s just me being a typical white girl and being obsessed with Uggs, iPhones, and all things pumpkin, but I think it sounds delicious.  Mix 1-2 T of pumpkin puree into your cocoa and put whipped cream and cinnamon on top.  You probably want to try this out when you’re making a pie or making a lot of hot chocolate, otherwise you’ll have a partially used pumpkin puree sitting in your fridge for awhile.

Enjoy! Let me know in the comments below what your favorite hot chocolate add-in is so I can get some new ideas.