Gifts for Hot Chocolate Lovers and a DIY Gift Basket

The best gifts for hot chocolate lovers, plus an easy DIY hot chocolate gift basket you can put together in an afternoon.

Good morning, friends! Every fall, somewhere around the first cool morning, the hot chocolate moves to the front of the pantry. (I won’t lie, it never really goes to the back. I drink it in July.) If someone in your life feels the same way, today I’m sharing my favorite gifts for hot chocolate lovers: the chocolate itself, the mugs, the marshmallows, and a gift basket that goes together in an afternoon. Most of them also make wonderful stocking stuffers.

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Hot Chocolate or Hot Cocoa?

Did you know there is a difference between hot chocolate and hot cocoa? Put simply hot chocolate is shaved chocolate mixed with milk or cream creating a melted chocolate bar in a cup. Hot cocoa is cocoa powder mixed with sugar or other sweetener and milk. Both are delicious, but hot chocolate is much richer.

Then there is the question of dark chocolate or milk chocolate, and this is where people get opinionated. Dark chocolate makes a deeper, less sweet cup, closer to what you would be served in a Paris café. Milk chocolate is sweeter and creamier, the cup that tastes like coming in from sledding when you were eight. If you aren’t sure which camp your person is in, give one of each and let them decide. (It also means you have to taste both first. Purely for research.)

If you have a hot chocolate or hot cocoa lover in your house you cannot go wrong with gifting them all things hot chocolate or hot cocoa related.

The Best Hot Chocolate for Gifts and Stocking Stuffers

• Williams Sonoma has a delicious selection of hot chocolate, they offer classic, caramel, and double dark.
• TCHO is an excellent hot chocolate it you like a fruity, rich dark chocolate. Another of my favorites is Maine made, woman owned, Bixby.
• Dolfin drinking chocolate from Belgium it is my all-time favorite, but it is hard to find in the US. I have been known to take an extra suitcase to Paris and fill it with Dolfin.
• There are many other chocolate companies that make hot chocolate or drinking chocolate, Frans, Christopher Elbow, Jacques Torres, Vosges, MarieBelle, and Chocolat Vitale. Experiment with a few different kinds and pick your favorite.

Hot Chocolate Gift Sets

If building a basket isn’t your thing, a ready-made hot chocolate gift set does the work for you. Look for one that pairs the chocolate with something to keep, a mug or a little pot, so the gift lasts after the tin is empty. Williams Sonoma puts together lovely sets every holiday season, as does Fortnum & Mason. A gift set is also my answer for anything that has to be shipped across the country, because a set arrives looking the way it left.

Mexican Hot Chocolate and a Molinillo

Mexican hot chocolate is its own delicious thing: chocolate with cinnamon, sometimes a little chile, and a slightly grainy sweetness you can still feel on your tongue. It is traditionally frothed with a molinillo, a carved wooden whisk you twirl between your hands until the top is foamy. I love giving one because it is useful and beautiful at the same time, the kind of tool that ends up standing in a crock on the counter instead of hiding in a drawer. Pair a hand-carved molinillo whisk with a few tablets of Mexican chocolate and a bundle of cinnamon sticks tied with twine

The Best Hot Cocoa for Gifts and Gift Baskets

If you are a hot cocoa fan there are so many options, including Whittard, Godiva, L’Ancienne from France, and many others. Caputos market has many great options from all over the world.

For something a little more playful, there are hot chocolate bombs: a shell of chocolate filled with cocoa and mini marshmallows that cracks open when you pour warm milk over it. Children love them, and so, it turns out, do grown women. A peppermint mocha mix is another good choice for the coffee drinker who also can’t walk past the hot chocolate aisle.

 If you don’t feel like buying hot cocoa, you can make your own hot cocoa mix to give to friends and family. It is an easy and delicious homemade gift.

How to Make Hot Cocoa

A reader asked me last year how to make hot cocoa from the Dutch cocoa sitting in her pantry, and it deserves an answer here, because it is the easiest thing in the world to teach someone. Whisk the cocoa powder and sugar together in a small saucepan with just a splash of milk until you have a smooth paste with no lumps. Then pour in the rest of the milk and warm it slowly over medium-low heat, whisking, until it steams. Don’t let it boil. A pinch of salt and a drop of vanilla at the end make all the difference. For exact amounts, my homemade hot cocoa mix has the proportions I use, and a jar of it with a handwritten recipe card makes a lovely little gift on its own.

Hot Chocolate Mugs

The perfect mug is a personal thing. I have ones that I use in the winter or around the holidays with whimsical sayings or snowmen or from my travels and others that I like to use in the summer (yes I drink hot chocolate year round).

Like coffee and tea drinkers I change mugs to suit my mood.

Isn’t this Emma Bridgewater mug a wonderful reminder of an afternoon at Fortnum & Mason in London?

Williams Sonoma, Anthropologie and Pottery Barn have a few that would be perfect including the perfect plaid mugs for everyone in the family.

A gift basket is unique, easy to make and a great option for the “hard to buy for” people in your life. They are also great for people who really do not want or need anything but you want them to have something special.

How to Make a Hot Chocolate Gift Basket

• Choose a theme
• Get a basket, bucket, tray, cookie tin or a bag
• Purchase or make items to fit the theme, cookies, candy, etc
• Cellophane
• Ribbon, twine, bows
• Then nestle the items in the basket, wrap with cellophane, tie on a bow and voila, a fabulous gift.

Where to Find Gift Basket Supplies

I purchased the hot cocoa, the pot, the cups, mug and napkins at Tj Maxx and Marshalls but you can find the same sorts of things on Amazon, at your local grocery store, Walgreens or anywhere else that you shop. Then grab a basket add the mug, hot chocolate, cookies, decorative napkins, etc and wrap with cellophane. Add a bow and a card or gift tags and you have an easy and beautiful hot chocolate gift basket.

What Gift Goes Well With Hot Chocolate?

Here are some gifts that go well with hot chocolate and hot cocoa.

•  Hot cocoa or Hot Chocolate
•  Small cocoa pot
• Mugs
• Disposable cups
• Decorative holiday napkins
• Homemade cookies in a cellophane bag.
• Gingerbread Cookies
• Marshmallows, purchased or homemade.
• Candy Canes
• Chocolate Spoons
• Cinnamon sticks
• A recipe card with your favorite hot chocolate recipe
• If you want to make your basket extra special include homemade treats as well, for this one I made sugar cookies and homemade marshmallows.

Make a DIY Hot Chocolate Gift

A DIY hot chocolate gift is perfect for teachers, friends, co-workers or even your neighbors and easy to make.

I would include a beautiful mug, homemade cookies and, if you have time, homemade marshmallows. You can find the recipe that I use in this post.

Simply place the mug, hot chocolate, marshmallows, and cookies in a decorative bag, or wrap them in cellophane, add a ribbon and a tag and you have a great DIY hot chocolate gift.

What goes into your perfect cup? Are you a dark chocolate person, a marshmallow person, or someone who quietly adds a splash of something stronger after dinner? And if you make gift baskets, what do you always tuck inside?

For more hot chocolate fun why not make a hot cocoa and hot chocolate board?

Until Next Time

I hope you found something here for the hot chocolate lover on your list, even if that person happens to be you. (If so, I recommend leaving this post open on the family computer. Subtlety is overrated at Christmas.) For more ideas, my holiday gift guide for her has a few more of my favorites. Thank you for spending part of your day with me.

You can also keep up with me on Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook  and LTK! And last but not least, if you like Pinecones & Acorns share it with a friend!

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You might also enjoy:

How to Make a Hot Cocoa and Hot chocolate board?

Homemade Marshmallows 

Homemade Hot Chocolate Mix 

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