The V Spot

Rants, observations, and home decorating... from a woman with no time for a blog.


No more burned tongues! Make hot cocoa ice cubes.

30 Comments

I shared this simple tip over at I {Heart} Naptime last week.    It’s an easy way to help keep your little people from getting burned by one of the holiday season’s most common treats: hot cocoa.
Have you ever burned your tongue?  Of course you have.  It hurts, and it would be preventable if you just had enough patience to wait for it to cool.

Look at this little face….

Can you see the excitement…?  The eagerness to dive into this steaming cup of hot cocoa…?  The reluctance to listen to mommy when she says “wait until that cools a little, OK?”

Do away with the waiting (and the burned tongues) by making Hot Cocoa Ice Cubes.

You can use regular old ice cube trays for this, but the holiday shaped ones provide a little extra fun.

I couldn’t find Christmas ice cube trays yet, so I opted for lollipop molds as a temporary alternative.  Not the best choice, but it worked well enough for now.  Make a cup of cocoa according to packet directions. Set the molds and/or trays onto a cookie sheet and carefully fill them with the cooled cocoa.  Pop the cookie sheet into the freezer.
When frozen, turn the “cocoa cubes” out of the molds and store them in a ziploc bag for future use.
Because they’re made out of cocoa, they don’t water down the drink.   The kids like to add in the cubes themselves, along with the marshmallows or in the case of this particular photo shoot: whipped cream and a candy cane.
(By the way, this is also nice to do with coffee too.  Our coffee maker brews it up super hot and I always seem to have a little extra coffee in the pot.  With the price of coffee being what it is, I want to be sure I’m not wasting it.)

We also run into this problem when we are camping, so doing up some of these cocoa cubes in advance and making sure they are kept cold enough in the cooler helps a lot for cool mornings around the campfire.  (Coolers with dry ice in them can keep things frozen solid for days….)

So, it’s a very simple tip and very easy to do… but sometimes the simplest things are the best things.  Happy Holidays! (Or Happy Camping!)

Check the bottom of the blog to see where I link this project.
Also linking to: Home Stories A2Z

I’m going to link this post up here:

Seriously Shawn
 

Comments

  6. What an awesome idea!!! I do this all the time! (Burn my tongue, I mean…)

    So how do you keep yourself from eating the little frozen cocoa cubes right out of the freezer? I mean, it has to taste like a cocoa popsicle, right? I’d have trouble keeping them around long enough for hot cocoa!

    Reply

  8. Who hasn’t ever burned their tongue? Why didn’t I ever think of this? This is COMPLETELY genius. If I could make just ONE INVENTION and run with it, maybe I’d be a millionaire.

    Thanks for linking up, Friend! Have a great evening!

    xoxo

    Reply

  11. What a great idea! I freeze grapes to drop in my wine, I like my red a little colder than it should be served, it’s a perfect solution.

    I think my favorite part of the post is your handsome model, what a ham!

    Thanks for linking up, muah!

    Reply

  23. Seriously brillianIdea, and thank you for posting.

    If you want a tip in return (and I get some odd looks when I suggest this, I don’t know why) ready-made chocolate milk makes really lovely hot chocolate. Just heat it up in the microwave. Use the usual sort of care when heating liquids in the microwave. Adding some of these ice cubes would be a nice touch, too.

    Reply

  29. What a great “why didn’t I think of that” idea.
    I am thinking I might make mine with layers of milk, chocolate and then cocoa. Very festive and yummy with the extra layer of chocolate.

    Reply

  30. Hey,

    I am starting to realize you could fill millions of ice cube trays with the amount of things I don’t know! What a great idea – so simple, why didn’t I think of it? Well, at least I did think to read this post…so that’s something. Thanks!!

    Reply

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