National Hot Chocolate Day - January 31st

It's finally starting to get cold here in Southern California. Not as cold as other parts of the country certainly, but it's in the 40s when we go walking at night. What better way to warm up than with a warm beverage when we get home. 

Today is National Hot Chocolate Day and we've got the perfect thing to go with it!

One of my friends from Arizona sent us some very special treats. Chocolates and specialty marshmallows! 

A few of those are Toasted Mallow who makes gourmet smores and marshmallows. These are going to be perfect in our hot chocolate tonight! 

Special marshmallows like that deserves a little better than packet hot chocolate mix. We're going to make this from scratch. 

Searching google for hot chocolate recipes, the first one that came up was from celebratingsweets.com for Homemade Hot Chocolate. It has 128 reviews and 5 stars. Ingredients are whole milk, cocoa powder, sugar, chocolate chips, and vanilla. 

Where are my helpers? 

There they are! They're getting so big! They hardly even need the stool if they're just doing things on the counter. Because we're doing things on the stovetop, we still got it out. 

I measured out 4 cups of whole milk. To that, Ian added the sugar. 

Alli added the cocoa powder. 

It's so hydrophobic in cold liquid. Thankfully as it warms up, it gets a lot easier to mix into the milk. 

After warming up, Alli added the chocolate chips. 

And Ian measured out a little bit of vanilla to give it a little bit more complex flavor. 

Our cocoa is ready! Doesn't it look adorable? 

There's gingerbread man shaped peppermint marshmallows. 

And super adorable vanilla snowman marshmallows. 

Given the choice, both kids wanted the cute snowman marshmallows. 

Yummy!

That means I get to have the delicious peppermint hot chocolate. Perfect! Just what I was wanting. The kids go for the cuteness, I go for the flavor. 

The peppermint marshmallows were soft and melty, giving my hot chocolate good flavor. 

The kids, not wanting to miss out, asked if they could eat the peppermint ones by themselves. 

Hot Chocolate Day was fun to celebrate! Big thanks to our Arizona friends for sending us the goodies!