How To Make Hot Cocoa Bombs with a Five-Year-Old in 10 Easy Steps!
If you’re anything like me, you’re a parent with one five-year-old and generally questionable judgment about age appropriate activities. In an effort to help your child cultivate generosity and kindness, you may decide to have your child make holiday gifts for their loved ones. If you chose to help your child make hot cocoa bombs, you’ve made a terrible mistake. However, admitting to and correcting that mistake will surely cause a major meltdown. You’ve made your bed, and now you have to lie in it. Don’t worry, I’ve got you. Here’s how to make hot cocoa bombs with a five-year-old in 10 easy steps!
Step One: Read a bunch of cooking blogs about making hot cocoa bombs. Pick the one that sounds the smartest, something that uses proper names for the different ways to temper chocolate. Look for technical details like the precise temperature the chocolate should be. That one was probably written by some kind of chocolate expert. Is there such a thing as a chocolate expert? There must be. That’s probably what a chocolatier is. That’s a title right? OK, yeah, pick that recipe. That recipe is probably real good.
Step Two: Order your hot cocoa bomb molds on Amazon Prime with one day delivery. Then remember that those are real people who are having to pee in cans to overnight hot cocoa bomb molds to you and change it to no rush delivery. Come back to this sometime next week after the USPS loses your package, you reorder it and then your first package magically appears after all. Don’t forget to return the second set of molds you ordered. It’s way too late to cancel that order since you did make people pee in cans to rush them to you this time.
Step Three: Temper your chocolate in a double boiler or microwave. Ignore the fact that your recipe calls for 12 oz of chocolate and all your bags of chocolate are either 11 oz or 24 oz. Just dump that bag in and leave the rest to fate. Let your child stir the chocolate to help it melt. Don’t let them taste the chocolate. Just yell “Don’t eat that!” every few seconds to make sure this part goes smoothly. Some parents may choose not to yell during this process. Those parents lie to their children and tell them this chocolate is spicy. Feel free to substitute lying for yelling if that fits your parenting style better. How will you know that your chocolate is the right temperature? You could use your candy thermometer, but then you’ll have to change the batteries in it and wash it afterward. Just you know, get it nice and melty.
Step Four: Let your child scoop one tablespoon of the melted chocolate into each mold. Then grab a brush and paint the mold with the chocolate as if you live in a world without gravity. The chocolate definitely needs to cool down a little more. Maybe if you’d used your candy thermometer you’d have this chocolate at the right temperature, but I really doubt it. Don’t rush this. Let the chocolate get closer to smooth jiffy peanut butter consistency, that will let you build good edges, and forget about ruining a brush, just use a toddler spoon. That’s the right size for the mold and it’s rounded enough at the end that it’s not going to gouge holes in the bottom of your chocolate. Now, your shells are going to look like shit, but don’t worry, you’re just seeing the inside. Just like in real life, it doesn’t matter what’s happening on the inside as long as you’ve got the outside looking A-OK!
Step Five: Leave your molds to cool. This is a good time to clean up all the chocolate that your child has dribbled all over your home. Pro tip, have your child wash their hands right now because they’ve been putting chocolate on everything they touch. I probably should have mentioned that at the ends of steps three and four, but I was too busy telling my child to stop licking everything. Also, if your fancy recipe told you to run away from anyone who tells you to put your chocolate in the freezer, it’s time to close that window. Sure, your chocolate will get back to solid at room temperature, but guess how many chocolate shells you’re going to ruin testing to see if this solid is really, REALLY solid? All of them. You’re going to ruin all of them and have to start over. So go ahead and stick them in the freezer for thirty minutes. It’s totally fine, you’re not a chocolate expert, you can cheat a little.
Step Six: OK now this is the good part. This is what a five-year-old can definitely do. Scoop one tablespoon of hot cocoa mix, one heaping tablespoon of marshmallows and one half teaspoon of sprinkles into one half of your chocolate shells. Remind your child to “scoop a full tablespoon of hot cocoa mix, no a real full tablespoon, no see how there is a big empty spot in the scoop, that means it’s not full. Do you know what full means? OK. No. Nevermind!” Just do the scooping of the hot cocoa mix yourself, they can do the sprinkles. Kids love sprinkles. That’s enough. They’re still making these. Don’t worry.
Step Seven: Sweep all the sprinkles up off the floor. The sprinkles were really optional anyway. Who puts sprinkles in hot cocoa? No one. Don’t worry. This isn’t for the ‘gram. This is to teach your child about doing kind things for other people and eating up some of this ridiculously long winter break time. Also tell your child to wash their hands again. I know it seems like you shouldn’t have to because they only dumped sprinkles all over your kitchen, but trust me, there’s chocolate on those hands.
Step Eight: Don’t even pretend on this one. You’re closing these babies up all on your own. Wait until your kid is asleep so they don’t see the chocolate again. Temper a little more chocolate. When it’s cooled down a bit, dip an empty shell into the chocolate, and then press it on top of a filled shell.
Step Nine: OK, let’s be real. These are hideous. Don’t test these. Just trust that they look just as cool opening up in milk as they did in that video you saw online. Place them in cupcake liners so no one can see half of the spheres, put the best side up. Now place them in little cellophane bags and tie them up with some twine or ribbon. This will hide basically all of the imperfections. Make your kid write their name on a card you attach to them so people find all the weird misshapen spheres endearing.
Step Ten: You did it! Congratulate yourself on all the wonderful holiday memories you created.
