While you are gathered around the fire opening gifts, playing a board game or catching up with family and friends this Hot Chocolate recipe would be a nice accompaniment. Its warm, rich and full of holiday cheer. You may think that hot chocolate and hot cocoa are the same, but they are slightly different. Hot chocolate is made from real chocolate that is finely cut up and melted, while hot cocoa is flavored with cocoa powder. Depending on the recipe hot chocolate is typically heavier and more filling due to the melted chocolate.

You can see the chopped chocolate melting in the milk.

Two of my friends came over the other night and we made a batch of homemade hot chocolate ourselves. It was so wonderful to make memories with them in the kitchen. We had a blast. Bring some family in the kitchen and have them assist making hot chocolate on Christmas Eve! Maybe even leave some out for Santa ;)

Here's me, Courtney and Jenn making homemade hot chocolate!

Check out the beautifully photographed step-by-step process to making homemade hot chocolate on this blog. The recipe calls for whole milk and heavy cream, but we just used skim milk because we didn’t want it to be too rich. I thought the addition of maple syrup as a natural sweetener was very unique.

Our Homemade Hot Chocolate and biscotti!

It has been a wonderful past 23 days celebrating Christmas and the holiday season on the blog with you all. Thank you for reading along and for inspiring me. This will be my last post as I will be spending time with family the next two days, and I hope you will be too! But if you need any ideas for cooking or baking scan the posts from the past month, send me a Tweet or write on the Facebook wall. I’d love to help with any last-minute needs! :)

Merry Christmas and Happy Baking + Cooking!