Christmas Project #3

Christmas Project #3 is one of my favorites- Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix. It's a sweet and easy gift for friends and neighbors, and it's great to have on hand for Christmas company. Once you make this, you'll never go back to Swiss Miss. Actually, that's not true. I still use Swiss Miss sometimes. But this is like the difference between Blue Box Macaroni and yummy homemade baked mac and cheese. Given the choice, you would surely go homemade.

Here's what you need:

25.6 oz. of dry milk

1 lb powder sugar

16 oz. plain non-dairy coffee creamer

16 oz. Nesquik

In the picture, I have enough ingredients to make double the recipe...I needed lots of Hot Cocoa. To give you an idea of how much this makes, I doubled the recipe and ended up with 6 pint jars  and 7 quart jars of dry mix.

The directions are simple; find a really big bowl (sometimes I use my stockpot), dump all of these dry ingredients together, and stir, stir, stir. Make sure it's mixed together really well and you're done! Easy Peasy.

To use your mix, Add 5 tablespoons of Hot Cocoa Mixture to 8 oz. of hot water.

Now let's make this into a cute gift...this is the fun part! I decant my Cocoa Mix into pint and quart mason jars. Then, get out all of your ribbon scraps and papers and pens and stamps...or whatever you have.

I'm happiest when my dining table looks like this:

I used a 1.5 inch circle punch to make my gift tags. I stamped them with a Christmas tree stamp that I got a few years ago from the Michael's $1 bin. Obviously my stamp pad is dried up...just roll with it. We'll make do.

I used a regular hole punch in the top for the ribbon. To jazz up the stamp a bit, I went over the tree with a green marker and hit the stars with a little yellow dot. It made it a little cheerier.

 

I cut squares of some red fabric with pinking shears on the lid and tied the tags on with green ribbon. I wrote a greeting on the front of the tags and on the back, are the instructions to make a cup of cocoa.

This is a great gift to have on hand to pass out to friends and neighbors. It will warm their hands and their heart. I've been snuggling up with a quilt and a mug every night.

Today, I'm going to try my hand at Barefoot Contessa's Homemade Marshmallows!

Wish me luck.

Melissa

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