ummm, wouldn't it be much tastier and actually cheaper to make the hot chocolate out of good chocolate and milk?.
IrisoftheWayfarer said:
ummm, wouldn't it be much tastier and actually cheaper to make the hot chocolate out of good chocolate and milk?
actually, no. At least not for us. We deliver their beverage tray outside their door an hour before their requested breakfast time. Beverages are in carafes, so for our chocolate drinker (most of the time it's only 1 person in the room who orders choc), we give them a few packets to choose from and a carafe of hot water. They do their own when they're ready.
If I were to make the choc, I would spend more time, and I would end up throwing out much more of the product. Most people want just a cup, but I would have to do a whole small carafe for them or it would look like I was rationing them. They rarely would drink the whole carafe.
.
You can try this recipe...
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/hot-cocoa-mix/ and put them into small plastic bags (we have a store that actually has different size little plastic bags) or in a small container, like a sugar bowl. Add some mini marshmallows. If you want it a bit richer, I would use something like one of the high quality cocoas, like Callebaut or Droste. Or you could use something less upscale like Hershey's and then grate some high quality white chocolate into the mix (which is what I would do). If you really want it to be very deep chocolate, you could add a little espresso powder (if you don't get LDS members, since they would object to the caffeine). Espresso powder would deepen the chocolate flavour, maybe a tablespoon to the whole mix, so it's there but not prevalent.
Thinking about it, you could then seperate some of the mix and partially flavour some for fancy options. You can crush mint candies for a mint chocolate. You can crush some caramel candies for a caramel chocolate. Some vanilla powder for French vanilla chocolate. I'm sure you can think of many other variations. Crush candies would just serve as more sweetness and powdered (via your food processor) would simply "disappear" when mixed with hot water.
.