How to Host a Hot Chocolate Bar

Choose your hot chocolate bases. Keep it simple because you’ll be letting each guest add their flavors and customizations later! We love making a classic hot chocolate and also a white hot chocolate so there are two options, but just one is also fine. If you want to keep it even simpler, pick up hot chocolate mix at the store, but make sure you stick with a plain dark, milk, or white, so that you won’t have competing flavors.

Different Flavored Syrups: The sky is the limit! For an awesome selection of syrups, check out Torani. Seriously, they have so many out-of-this-world flavors that will knock your socks off. Like practically every flavor that you can imagine. My recent favs are the gingerbread and newest flavor, chestnut praline. Oh, and the bourbon caramel. Oh, and who could forget the classic hazelnut or raspberry?!? And I’m still dying to try the toasted marshmallow. I could go on……. You can usually find Torani at your local grocery stores in the coffee/hot drinks section. There’s not always a huge variety at grocery stores though. If you want to go in-store to find the largest variety, World Market is the place to go. (Locally – I live in Utah – Orson Gygi has a good selection). Ordering from their website will ensure that you have access to all the yummy flavors! (And if you can’t use them all in hot chocolate, there’s always coffee, and I’ll have more ideas coming for Spring/Summer fixes as well!)

Different Sauces: Caramel sauce (our homemade recipe here), or hot fudge sauce. Torani has sauces as well – salted caramel, chocolate, white chocolate, even pumpkin. What?!? Check ’em out.

Add-Ins: Ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, candy canes, Andes mints, butterscotch disks, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, you get the idea…..

Top It Off With: Mini-marshmallows, whipped cream

And On the Side: Biscotti (we love our orange pecan biscotti recipe), chocolate mint cookies, rolled wafer cookies, or whatever else suits your fancy!

Make the appropriate amount of hot chocolate for your guests depending on your group size. You can warm these up on the stove top or if you are serving a big group, warming up in a crock pot is a great way to serve!

Next in line, have your mix-ins displayed and ready to serve.

Coming up next – the whipped cream and mini-marshmallows.

End your hot chocolate bar with a few varieties of cookies. The cookies mentioned here are great for dipping, but feel free to cookie yourself out!