Homemade Hot Chocolate Mix, in a Jar to Give

Published 14 Oct 20268 min read

Plenty of hot chocolate mix is little more than cocoa powder and sugar, and it drinks that way: thin and sweet. Add real chocolate to the jar and the cup changes. The cocoa butter in a chopped bar melts into the hot milk and gives it body, the kind of cup that coats the spoon. Made in a big batch and weighed into jars, it is one of the easiest food gifts of the winter, and one of the few homemade ones that can sit under a tree for weeks.

The recipe below is written in grams because hot chocolate mix is a ratio, and a scale keeps every jar the same. It makes about 560 grams, enough for 16 cups.

What goes in the jar, and why

Chopped dark chocolate carries most of the flavor and all of the richness. A bar between 64 and 72 percent cacao gives a cup that tastes of chocolate rather than sugar. Valrhona's Guanaja 70 percent comes as fèves, small flat discs that chop or grind easily (shop Valrhona Guanaja 70 percent fèves), and any single-origin bar from the chocolate bars collection works the same way.

Cocoa powder deepens the color and the roasted, bitter edge. Cocoa powder is what is left when much of the cocoa butter is pressed out of ground cacao, and US federal rules sort it by how much fat remains: breakfast cocoa must contain at least 22 percent cacao fat. Dutch-process cocoa has been treated with an alkali to soften its acidity, and the same rules require the label to say so, with the words "processed with alkali." Dutch-process cocoa is darker and milder than natural cocoa, which suits a mix. Valrhona's cocoa powder is unsweetened and a warm red mahogany color (shop Valrhona cocoa powder). The cocoa powder guide goes deeper on natural versus Dutch.

Milk powder makes the cup creamier and lets the recipient use hot water if there is no milk in the house. Nonfat dry milk is fresh milk with the cream and water removed, so it adds milk proteins and milk sugar and, being nonfat, no butterfat.

Sugar and salt do what they do in any dessert. The sugar is set so a cup made with milk tastes sweet but not candied. The pinch of salt makes the chocolate taste fuller.

Why cocoa floats in clumps

Anyone who has stirred cocoa into a mug of hot milk has seen dry brown islands bob on the surface while the spoon goes round. A 2017 study in Chemical Engineering Transactions, on making chocolate drink powders that dissolve instantly, names two reasons. The first is fat: cocoa powder carries 10 to 25 percent fat, which keeps water from wetting it. The second is structure: the powder is full of tiny channels that trap air pockets, and the air holds the water out.

Industry fixes these problems with special equipment that clumps the powder into larger, porous granules. At home, two steps do most of the same work. Sifting the cocoa with the milk powder breaks up lumps before they ever reach the cup. Then, when serving, a spoonful of hot milk worked into the mix first makes a paste that has no dry pockets left in it, and the rest of the milk thins that paste smoothly. The chopped chocolate helps, too: as it melts it turns into a liquid fat that carries the cocoa with it.

Ingredients

For about 560 g of mix, 16 cups

200 g dark chocolate, 64 to 72 percent, such as Valrhona Guanaja 70 percent fèves
90 g unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
150 g granulated sugar
120 g nonfat dry milk powder
2 g fine sea salt (a scant half teaspoon)
To serve: 240 ml (1 cup) whole milk per cup, or hot water for a lighter cup

Method

Chop the chocolate. Chop it as finely as you can with a heavy knife, or pulse it in a food processor with the sugar until it looks like coarse sand. Pulse in short bursts. A blade running continuously warms the chocolate, and soft chocolate smears into the bowl instead of breaking into crumbs. The sugar crystals help grind it.
Sift the powders. Sift the cocoa powder and milk powder together into a large bowl, pressing any lumps through the sieve with a spoon.
Combine. Add the chocolate, sugar and salt and whisk, or pulse in the processor, until the mix is an even brown with no white streaks of milk powder. Little shards of chocolate are fine; large chunks melt slowly in the cup.
Fill the jars. Weigh the mix into clean, completely dry jars and close them tightly. Water is the enemy here: a damp jar makes the powders cake into a brick. Tie on a tag with the directions in step 6 and the date you made it.
Heat the milk. To serve, heat 240 ml of milk in a small pan until it steams and small bubbles form at the edge. It does not need to boil.
Make a paste, then whisk. Put 35 g of mix, about two heaping tablespoons, in a mug. Whisk in a splash of the hot milk until it forms a smooth, glossy paste, then whisk in the rest. If any chocolate is still unmelted, pour everything back into the pan and whisk over low heat for a minute. The cup is ready when it looks glossy and coats the back of a spoon.

Hot chocolate at Denver's altitude

Altitude changes one thing in this recipe: how fast the pan gets to a boil. Colorado State University Extension notes that water boils at 212°F at sea level but at about 203°F at 5,000 feet, and Denver sits a little higher. Milk is mostly water, so in a Denver kitchen it reaches a boil at a lower temperature and foams up the pan sooner than a sea-level recipe expects. Pull it off the heat as soon as the first small bubbles appear at the edge. The mix itself needs no change for altitude.

How much to put in a gift jar

Mix in the jar	Cups with 240 ml milk	A good fit for
140 g	4 cups	A stocking or a small thank-you
280 g	8 cups	A household gift
560 g (the whole batch)	16 cups	A family that drinks it every night of the holidays

Write the serving line on the tag in plain words: Whisk 35 g, about 2 heaping tablespoons, into 1 cup of steaming milk. Keep the jar closed, cool and dry. With hot water instead of milk, the cup is lighter; a little more mix makes up for some of the lost body.

For a gift that is ready to give, a mug or a bar beside the jar finishes it, and an empty gift box (shop empty gift boxes and baskets) holds the lot. For a crowd, the hot chocolate bar guide scales the idea up to twelve guests.

How long the mix keeps

The mix keeps as long as its most delicate ingredient, and that is the milk powder. Utah State University Extension's figures for unopened nonfat dry milk packed without oxygen run from 24 to 48 months at 50°F down to 12 to 24 months at 70°F and about 3 months at 90°F, and the same guide warns that once opened, dried milk will not keep as long, and that moisture causes caking. A jar of homemade mix has been opened, so date the tag and treat the mix as something to drink over the winter rather than to store for a year.

The chocolate has its own issue. Warmth can bring cocoa butter to the surface of the chopped pieces as a pale film called fat bloom. It is harmless and melts away in hot milk, and the guide to why chocolate turns white explains how it forms. Keep the jar out of the sun and away from the stove.

Hot chocolate, drinking chocolate and three easy variations

This mix sits between two styles. Cocoa-based hot chocolate is light and sweet; drinking chocolate, made mostly from melted chocolate, is thick and rich. The hot chocolate vs. drinking chocolate guide lays out the difference. For a thicker cup, use 45 g of mix per cup of milk.

Variations are easy to build into a jar. A teaspoon of ground cinnamon per batch makes a spiced mix, and Burlap & Barrel's Royal Cinnamon is a strong, sweet Vietnamese cinnamon for it (shop Burlap & Barrel Royal Cinnamon). For peppermint, Dick Taylor grinds Belize chocolate with crushed natural peppermint candy (shop Dick Taylor peppermint drinking chocolate). And for anyone who would rather give than make, Dandelion grinds its 70 percent Belize chocolate into a house hot chocolate mix (shop Dandelion house hot chocolate mix), and Ocelot shaves its black cherry 70 percent bar into a drinking chocolate that calls for about 28 grams per 200 ml of milk (shop Ocelot black cherry drinking chocolate).

What makes a jar of mix worth giving is the bar inside it. Cocoa powder makes a cup that tastes of cocoa; chocolate makes a cup that tastes of the particular chocolate in it, fruit or roast or spice. Choose the bar the way you would choose one to eat, and the recipient tastes that choice every night of the winter.