First, Happy Holidays to you and your loved ones from Pat and I! It’s been a wonderful year for us and we are looking forward to getting married in 2013!
I love making presents for the holidays. I made homemade marshmallows for our engagement shoot and loved them so much that I thought they would make great presents for our family and friends. I’m surprised by the amount of people I’ve talked to who are amazed that you can make marshmallows from scratch. The ones I made for our photos are cardamom flavored. I promise I’ll post the recipe!
I saw a recipe on Not Without Salt for maple hot cocoa made and knew that this would be the perfect partner to my homemade marshmallows. It gets its maple flavor from maple sugar. It’s more complex than regular sugar and adds a little extra smokey flavor.
I bundled up the ingredients in mason jars with a little bit of twine and some homemade labels. Mason jars are the perfect package as they are easily reused and cost about $7 for 12 at our local grocery store.
Maple Hot Cocoa Mix
Adapted from Not Without Salt
Makes enough for one mason jar
1 c. cocoa powder – I used Valrhona, which is high quality
1/2 c. maple sugar
1 tsp. decaf instant espresso powder or decaf instant coffee
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 vanilla bean (optional)
1. Layer all the ingredients in a mason jar
2. Slide the optional vanilla bean down the side of the jar
To serve:
Shake contents and use two heaping tablespoons of mix for 6 oz. of hot liquid.
These are the labels that I made for the wide mouthed mason jars. Feel free to download them and print them!
Just a note, buying vanilla beans in bulk on Amazon is amazing! I was able to get 1/2 pound of Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans for $27. This worked out to be a little over 50 vanilla beans. Compare this to the typical cost of $10 for two beans in a grocery store and this works out to a savings of over $250!!! Here is where I got the beans I used for this maple hot cocoa recipe.
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