Coco For Hot Cocoa: A review of trendy hot chocolate recipes

Between present wrapping and tree decorating, there’s nothing better than sipping on the best holiday drink — and I’m definitely not talking about eggnog — hot chocolate. Marshmallows can get boring, so it’s time to spice up our hot coco options — figuratively and literally. With an abundance of “best hot cocoa” recipes and styles in all corners of the internet, the question is — which style is the way to go?

Stir Spoons

Out of the three variations I tried, Target’s stir spoons — a short wooden spoon with a block of chocolate on the end to stir into warm milk — offered the most enjoyable experience, perfect for a babysitting activity or when binging Christmas movies with your cousins. It takes long enough to count as an activity but doesn’t take up so much time that your patience runs out. 

The pack of stirrers I got from Target included a packet of marshmallows and mint-chocolate cookies — which I thought was a charming touch. However, there weren’t enough marshmallows in the pack to account for the ones I ate during the one-minute-and-30-second microwave period — but that may just be a personal issue. 

The only major inconvenience was that the chocolate took such an unbearably long time to melt in the milk and I had to reheat it for a second time. Nonetheless, this stirrer pack is a must for any cozy, Christmas night-in.

Starbucks Hot Chocolate Pack

Others may describe my habits as “lazy,” but I prefer the term “minimalist” — I’m always looking to do the least amount of work for the best results. Starbucks hot chocolate packs from Target are by far my favorite style in regard to convenience since I was able to run to the kitchen and dissolve the packet into warm milk in the two minutes between classes. 

Call me old-fashioned, but I love a straight-forward hot cocoa recipe where the only steps are heating up milk and mixing in the cocoa powder. This mix quickly and evenly dissolved without clumping at the bottom of the cup. 

The specialty flavor, caramel-cocoa, was present in the drink but didn’t overpower the classic chocolate flavor. The wide variety of flavors such as mint-chocolate and gingerbread in the Christmas tree shaped pack certainly added some excitement to the otherwise common drink — making me want to try another flavor. 

Hot Cocoa Bombs

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a holiday trend — wearing Christmas pajamas out in public, going ice skating at Crown Center, White Elephant gift exchanges — but these TikTok-inspired hot cocoa “bombs” just didn’t do it for me. First of all, it required multiple ingredients and a special circular mold which put me at a disadvantage from the get-go. 

I’m first to admit I’m no Gordon Ramsey in the kitchen, but I don’t see any level of experience where these aren’t a pain to make. The process was a mess and took about four times as long to make as the other two styles — heating and reheating in 15-second increments and then mold and freeze for another five-minutes — which, I’ll have to admit, was a test of my patience. 

I also struggled to connect the two halves of the dark chocolate shell to form the “bomb” no matter how many tips-and-tricks I found online. 

I’ll give points for visual because the way it spun and “exploded” in the hot milk was fun to watch, but that was about the only good thing I have to say about these. Overall it was way too much work and not worth it for the exceptionally mediocre cup of hot chocolate.