Quick and Dirty Christmas Giving

Here's a really quick project for Christmas giving. It's not actually dirty unless you attempt it with small children and then, watch out. We started making our own hot chocolate mixes this summer for going camping and I am a total convert. I've always thought packaged mixes tasted slightly of microwave popcorn (gag) and making your own couldn't be much simpler. The only crucial piece of equipment is a metal mesh sieve to run everything through. It really makes the difference and makes the cocoa and powdered milk homogeneous and easy to mix with hot water. Without the sieve the mixture tended to be lumpy and hard to mix. Really, who needs all the extra stirring, I'm already so tired at the end of the day. So, just mess around with good quality cocoa, powdered milk skim or whole, sugar and then for the fancy giving add powdered ginger or pulse the mix with a few drops of peppermint oil.