Hot Chocolate Stations - how does it work?

[DiamondBright]

I'm not criticising anyone, I just don't understand how they fit into Christmas.

If you have one is hot chocolate with marshmallows and candy canes etc. a regular thing in your house in the winter anyway, so it makes sense to keep all the fixings on display? Is it a daily treat?

I get maybe setting one up for a party or maybe on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day if you have guests but I gather they go up with the tree and stay up all December in some homes.

I don't have snacks out all December either and I know people have Christmas snack baskets, in the world of Instagram and YouTube anyway. Maybe I'm just the wrong demographic, I'd like to be eating treats and drinking hot chocolate all December but i already have a weight problem and wouldn't trust myself.

I bake and put out chocolates but not usually until around the 22nd or 23rd.

It all sounds a bit tacky and shit to me. People just spend money on absolute crap.
Is it really all for the social media pics?

My cats would love one of these! It would fulfil both their “things to lick” and “places to leave hairs” objectives…

I'd never heard of this but I just looked on Insta and I love it! I'm gonna go to home bargains tomorrow and get some jars and a tray 😃 probably won't be quite so full on as candy canes and personalised mugs but I think it's cute and I want a mini one in my kitchen ☺️

I wouldn't want to do anything to encourage my DD to mainline more sugar and make more mess than she already does.

I'd never heard of these till this week either. We have a velvetiser so that is our hot chocolate station I suppose. None of us like fancy flavours or anything added other than masrshmallows but I do usually treat us to a can of squirty cream in December.

What a gimmick! I get it if you are having a party, or are managing a national trust cafe and have had to cut down on staff, but otherwise it sounds like a very chintzy and overindulgent idea to me.

I actually do have quite a few hot chocolates during December with my velvetiser and yes I am fat and also happy.

I'd like to have a little hot choc station as it would make me happy but I'd just eat all the biscuits immediately so it would just be empty jars

Are the velvetisers any good? Do they make a better hot chocolate than just doing it in a pan or the microwave, really?

Ugh too much stuff out on the sides - would give me the twitches.

I don;t even have the tea/coffee/sugar/whatever jars out on the side, they're in the cupboard... and the toaster is in the pantry (with the microwave)

We all eat enough sweet crap without extra encouragement so no way would I set up a “hot choc station”

Had never heard of it until this thread

A what now?

I quite like the idea of one of these on Christmas Eve but don't have the counter space for it throughout December. But honestly my DC don't fancy a hot chocolate that often, the youngest doesn't like whipped cream and neither are big on toppings so I think they'd be distinctly underwhelmed if I did this on CE, wouldn't fancy a hot chocolate and it'd be a complete waste of time and money!

@NdujaWannaDance

Apparently the candy canes melt, so you use them like a spoon. You stir the hot chocolate with them and they give out a minty flavour. I only know this as I saw some Candy cages at a craft fair a few days ago, they were upside down like hockey sticks with a solid lump of chocolate on them. The sign said you stir them in to hot milk and it all melts together.

@LivingDeadGirlUK

I've never heard of this before, having just had a google I can proudly say I'm ahead of the curve. We frequently don't get around to putting away the shopping straight away and my hot chocolate powder, biscuits, and chocolates are often just left on the counter. Not even December 1st yet.

Haha! Love this and I join you in the proud cohort of unintentional hot chocolate station-ers. What even is that?? Things get madder and madder every year.

@MilkTooth it’s just because it looks really cluttered. I hate stuff sitting all over kitchen sides, it looks untidy. We cook from scratch every night, (sounds like such a wanky thing to say but does play a huge part in why I keep the sides totally clear), make bread most days and so on. To clean the kitchen sides properly with things all left out all over them would take much longer taking things off to clean and then putting them back.
We always had small kitchens and so it was never an option to have clear sides and then a few years ago built an extension to the back of our house and now have a really big (to us!) kitchen with adequate storage to not have to have anything on the sides. Looks tidy and clean now!

[quote TheChosenTwo]@MilkTooth it’s just because it looks really cluttered. I hate stuff sitting all over kitchen sides, it looks untidy. We cook from scratch every night, (sounds like such a wanky thing to say but does play a huge part in why I keep the sides totally clear), make bread most days and so on. To clean the kitchen sides properly with things all left out all over them would take much longer taking things off to clean and then putting them back.
We always had small kitchens and so it was never an option to have clear sides and then a few years ago built an extension to the back of our house and now have a really big (to us!) kitchen with adequate storage to not have to have anything on the sides. Looks tidy and clean now![/quote]
I suppose I just find that quite mad, unless lack of space is a real issue — for me (and we also cook a lot and bake bread and cakes) the luxury of space is precisely that you can have things on surfaces without needing to fish them out from somewhere, and still have plenty of work room. I don’t mean waffle-makers or tagines, but kettles, toasters, breadbins, a fruit bowl etc.

I think I said this on a recent thread about boiling water taps, but we used to have a neighbour who hid her kettle along with all her other appliances in drawers, and who, when she asked us in for a cup of tea, would empty and replace the kettle again the minute she’d made the tea. Once when her husband came in and took it out of the drawer again to make his tea, she looked absolutely anguished that it was out, as if it was something deeply personal and sensitive! I kept thinking she was going to pounce and wrestle it back out of sight.

Haha @ the kettle war
We don’t have a toaster (use the grill) or a breadbin (built a specific cupboard for bread to go over the top of the fridge freezer bridging the 2 tall pull our larder type cupboards), fruit bowl lives on the dining table. Our mixer has its own drawer stored with the bowl and attachments, it takes seconds to get out because there’s nothing else in there all piled in!
For us it’s worth the extra seconds taken to get it out of the drawer and put it back in again, it’s made up for by not having to move stuff to clean.
I can see what you’re saying though about having the space and using it for leaving things out. I just don’t like how it looks or the extra cleaning so everything has a hidden home

@TheChosenTwo

Haha @ the kettle war We don’t have a toaster (use the grill) or a breadbin (built a specific cupboard for bread to go over the top of the fridge freezer bridging the 2 tall pull our larder type cupboards), fruit bowl lives on the dining table. Our mixer has its own drawer stored with the bowl and attachments, it takes seconds to get out because there’s nothing else in there all piled in! For us it’s worth the extra seconds taken to get it out of the drawer and put it back in again, it’s made up for by not having to move stuff to clean. I can see what you’re saying though about having the space and using it for leaving things out. I just don’t like how it looks or the extra cleaning so everything has a hidden home

Wasn’t there a Mn class thread way back about where you kept your fruit bowl indicating your social class? Unfortunately,I can’t remember any of the claims.

@tinkywinkyshandbag

Christ not another stick for Mums to beat themselves up with. Elf on a feckin shelf, Christmas Eve boxes, special pyjamas, hot chocolate stations...what next?!

Exactly. I googled to see what it was and the first result was a headline from the Daily Fail (or some such) that said 'Mums are showing off their hot chocolate stations and they look amazing!'. More tedious expectations for women, why aren't dads showing off their hot chocolate stations?

We live in a part of the country where if you don’t put your real Christmas tree up on the 23rd with white lights and glass decorations only in your farrow&ball grey room then anything else is deemed ‘tacky’ or ‘tat’.

This thread is a bit of an extension of that. I may make the trip to the nearest home bargains this week for some bling for my hot chocolate tray and see how tacky I can make it . Then invite the neighbours round and watch their lips curl in disgust.

Honestly though - given the shitstorm that the last 18 months have been - someone wants to make a big deal about some hot chocolate and a candy cane? I say let them and unclench about what other people choose to clutter the kitchen worktops with in their own homes.

My DSis sends us maybe 2kg box of quality street.
I bin half of it before anyone else knows it's here. (why feed kids crap when they can eat healthy stuff)

I just have a velvetiser. I did go to a party with a hot chocolate station with it being made in the slow cooker but it had a skin on it and most of it got tipped away

I don't get the point myself, but can see why some people like them. Seems a mean spirited thread, what's the point of posting about it, just to get people to say they think it's stupid too?

For me not having stuff put isn’t a space thing, we have quite a big kitchen and everything’s mostly in drawers ( how I regret the cupboards thst are not drawers now) so it’s just there but not sitting out needing cleaned all the time. Basically I’m a lazy mare and the less cleaning the better.

@Catfog

I don't get the point myself, but can see why some people like them. Seems a mean spirited thread, what's the point of posting about it, just to get people to say they think it's stupid too?

Some people have posted to say they have one and like it, that was the point really to find out if people do use them because in my house it would just mean extra mess, expense and calories. I suspect a lot of them are for display only with kids discouraged from helping themselves and making a mess, when the idea is supposed to be that it's available to help yourself.

We're tea and water/squash drinkers mainly, for me hot chocolate is something I might have in a café or at a winter event but not an every day drink.