Don’t run out of these mixes again! These are so easy to make and they taste so much better than the store-bought… your family won’t know what you did differently but they’ll love it!
It’s that time of year when the cooler weather seems to make us crave some hot cocoa. We have set up our ‘Beverage Station’ at home and the kids asked for cocoa. It just happened that we had some packets in the cupboard so I added them to the assortment of things they could choose from along with some marshmallows in a jar for them to use.
These recipes would be great for taking along with you on a car ride to look at Christmas lights. Many of them could even be used to make Gifts in a Jar to give away for the holidays. These would even be good to sip and snack on while snuggled up with your favorite book on a cold winter evening… mmmm.
You can create some really wonderful memories with your kiddos or grandkids as well by letting them help to make cookies and cocoa… these would be memories that stick with them!
Here are some of our All-Time Favorite cocoa recipes:
Recently I posted our favorite bread recipe that we have been keeping on repeat around here… it is seriously good and all my previous homemade bread haters have been begging for more. I’ve been making double batches (four loaves) at a time and keeping half in the fridge for later in the week so I don’t have to do anything more than shape it and pop it in the oven.
Well, this week I mixed up my double batch and then realized I hadn’t added the salt. To fix this I made two more regular batches with twice the salt and incorporated half of the first batch into each new batch. Then I made one of the double batches into honey oat bread and left the other plain.
This week we will be having our St. Nicholas Day celebration and putting up our Christmas tree and Winter decor so those will be our main focus but we also have our annual Polar Express party coming up so we will be focusing some attention on that as well. Here are some of the things that we will be working on this week:
I know I’ve mentioned in a few posts that we’ve been making our own bread again. We love sourdough bread but a few of the kids had mentioned that they really wanted something more like store-bought so I tried a few recipes and with a couple of tweaks we have found a combo that we really like… Mr. Awesome and I haven’t been eating much bread but we have tried a slice here and there as it smells so good! It is quite exceptional when it’s still a little warm and smeared with real butter and then drizzled with a bit of local honey… mmmmm!
This bread is great to use as rolls and as an alternative to English Muffins for breakfast. It also toasts up really nicely! We save all the breadcrumbs in a baggie in the freezer to use in our recipes where breadcrumbs are needed.
I recently converted my sourdough starter ‘Fran’ to a pasta madre/lievito madre/stiff dough and I like the results so far. You can learn more about this process HERE. I think I want to try to make some Panettone for Christmas this year so I wanted to get some starters going and get a little more familiar with the process.