Hot Chocolate Mix

One of my favorite childhood memories was helping my mom make an instant hot cocoa mix. The recipe makes a HUGE batch and it seemed to last for about a year. Of course, I was a child so my memory may be a little skewed. The recipe is HUGE though; that part of my memory was not skewed!

I had my mom dig up her old recipe and then ran off to purchase the ingredients. It cost approximately $25 for all the ingredients. We plan to put some of the mix in cute containers and give it as Christmas gifts this year.

One of the things I love about the mix is that it has dry milk in it, so it is just as though I had taken the time to heat up milk and mix in cocoa and sugar. Who has time to do that in real life though? One of the things I remember not loving was that it always seemed much more milky than chocolaty. In looking at the recipe it also seemed a bit too sugary for my grown up taste buds. I decided to make some adjustments to the recipe. I'll post the original recipe and then explain my adjustments. My favorite part of the recipe is the mixing instructions. Make and adjust as you please!

Instant Hot Chocolate Mix
1 20 qt box of powdered milk

1 16 oz coffee-mate (powdered)

1 2 lb. nestles quick (Now called Nesquick)

1 lb powdered sugar

Mix together. Fill cup 1/3 to 1/2 full with mix and fill with hot water. Stir, Sit back and relax!

Now- I decided to mix everything together except the powdered sugar. I thought the Nesquick would provide enough sugar. It mixed well and tasted just fine. I then wanted a darker, more chocolaty flavor so I added baker's cocoa powder to a small amount of the mix and tested it out. I thought it tasted great, but I wanted a second opinion. My husband tested it out both ways and agreed that he liked the cocoa powder. Here's my new recipe-

Anna's Hot Chocolate Recipe (2010)
1 20 qt box of powdered milk
1 16 oz coffee-mate (powdered)
1 2.54 lb Nesquick (It came in either 1.5 lbs or 2.5 lbs. I decided just to put in the full 2.5 lbs since I wasn't going to include the powdered sugar)
1 10 oz Baker's Cocoa (Most of them came in 8 oz containers, which I'm sure would work just fine. I just liked that particular brand.)

Note: This mix is HUGE. As you can see from the pictures, I used SEVERAL large mixing bowls and containers to mix it all together. I wanted to get all the ingredients really mixed in well, so I mixed a little of each into each bowl and then tried mixing them all together. When my husband came home he reminded me that we had a huge stock pot in our closet. I knew that stock pot would come in handy when I put it on our wedding registry! Then 20 qt stock pot did the trick. We put the lid on, clamped it down tight with our hands, and took turns shaking it. We also took huge ladles and stirred it around as best we could. The whole activity provided hot chocolate, exercise, and entertainment!