Blog with Friends - Hot Chocolate Bombs

Welcome back to Blog with Friends. It's the last post of this kind. Participation has been decreasing over time. So let's enjoy this one to the fullest. 

Thank you so much, Karen, for putting them together for six long years!

This month's topic is Party Season.

Of course December is the perfect month for parties.

On second thought, every month sort of is, don't you think? 

In January we celebrate new beginnings, in February we have Mardi Gras, in March it's my birthday AND St. Patrick's Day, April is for jokesters and most years it's Easter and Passover, and so forth.

When we agreed on "Party Season" for this blog collaboration earlier this year, we probably did not anticipate that we would have to come up with creative ways to still celebrate with our family and friends in times of a pandemic. 

H***, even our elves (who arrived ten days early this year to quarantine) are not flying back to the North Pole every night to tell Santa what the kids have been up to. Instead they are holding Zoom conferences.

Speaking of elves. Cookie, our classic red Elf on the Shelf got company! Colin named the green one Biscuit as in a British Cookie ;-) I guess it's safe to say they both have a sweet tooth.

I came across something I wanted to try this party season: Hot Chocolate Bombs!

It's one of these projects that look pretty straight forward if you watch video tutorials, but you end up swearing and developing a plan B. At least that's what happened in my kitchen.

It started with the fact that I don't own sphere moulds, but I decided I wasn't going to purchase more baking supplies that clutter my cabinets, so I used miniature tartlet molds. Since they are pretty tiny, even though I did add two coats, I didn't use too much (as in enough) chocolate. Which made them too thin and finicky to try and seal together. 

At least they came out more or less complete. Win!

Who said they are halves that need to be put together? If you leave them open, you can actually see the content. Which is, according to different tutorials (here's one with lots of useful tips and tricks), cocoa powder, pumpkin spice,  sprinkles, mini marshmallows, coconut shavings, cereal, crushed candy cane, peanuts, and more - but really, it's up to you!

As a rule, make up your mind if it's supposed to look pretty or taste yummy - you can't have both ;-) 

As soon as you pour over the hot milk, the nice look is going to disappear anyway.

Meaning Colin tried to get rid of the sprinkles because they tasted not great, as he put it. I think he did enjoy the overall experience though. At the very least he had nice company. Cookie and Biscuit were watching his every move.

To make it even more fun, here's another Hot Chocolate "hack": 

Make cute little Marshmallow Snowmen. Their favorite thing to do is to take a bath in hot chocolate. At least that's what I heard. You need marshmallows, pretzel sticks, chocolate sauce or sugar glue and (optional) candy.

You basically put everything together, and you hope they turn out more cute than monster-like!

If you want to take a picture you need to be ready before the snowman drowns and / or melts!

Farewell, Frosty!

I feel like I get sucked into one of these projects every year: Marshmallow Igloo, melting Snowman Cookie... 

Here's something that's still on my bucket list: a Gingerbread house, preferably a log cabin using pretzel sticks. Now here's the first challenge: in Switzerland you can't buy the sturdy pretzel rods, only skinny little sticks. We'll see.

Are you also somewhat of an incurable project optimist, trying out these fancy things? How do they usually turn out?

Let me know down below. Before you leave though, please visit my fellow bloggers' posts, keeping in mind this is the final episode of the Blog with Friends series: 

Karen at Baking in a Tornado make some delicious Shrimp and Crab Puffs for us

Tamara at Part-time working Hockey Mom tried her hand at making Hot Chocolate Bombs

P.J. at A ‘lil HooHaa is celebrating Party Season