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.

@Wrinklyeyes 😁 Bit smaller 😉

Perhaps people have cleaners! I could cope with it if someone else cleaned it...

@wrinklyeyes 😂 i have a similar garland and i do love a good winter village!

No room for a 'Hot Chocolate Station' in our house. Most of the worktop is taken up by the 'Marmite and Cream Cracker Terminus' and 'Ye Olde Oak Ham Depot'

@RJnomore1

what shite

Mugs sitting getting dusty, jars of stuff you only use occasionally, not your coffee stuff you use all the time (even I have my coffee machine out!). Why would your children need to balance on a chair otherwise, do you have no base units in your kitchen?

The mugs don't get dusty, they're only out in December and mostly get used every day. The other stuff is in storage jars, I just give them a wipe if they're dusty when I'm cleaning the work top it's only four containers not a branch of Costa!! As I said they'd all need to be in jars in the cupboard anyway and I need that space for other things. I suppose I could put them in a base unit but to be honest I don't want to! I like how the containers look in the kitchen.

@inmyslippers

I believe you go to home bargains or b&ms buy more tatt you don't really need then post to other huns on Facebook.

This reeks of snobbery. Gold stars to all of you that don't snack over Christmas.

Let people enjoy things.

@Wrinklyeyes

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.

Exactly. All the competition to prove how 'classy' you are by how little you celebrate the season

I started a thread a few days ago about hot chocolate stations looking for ideas.

I don't understand the hate tbh. We're all in to different things. My kids and I have a hot chocolate a couple of times a week, none of us are overweight (you can even see their ribs, as per the MN requirement for children being a healthy weight) and don't eat puddings after meals anyway.

Everything is in sealed, decorated jars (reused candle jars) so nothing is left out to get sticky or stale. And as for clutter, it's really just a few jars next to the existing coffee machine, it looks nice and I enjoy putting it together and seeing it during the month.

I don't even have an insta account and haven't even put any pictures of it on SM so it's not about that for me, although if people enjoy doing that then I genuinely don't see the problem, it's nice to see pretty, festive pictures of things that people have enjoyed doing, like putting their tree up or making a wreath.

When I was little there were always bowls of nuts and Quality Streets around, this is just really an extension of that.

Amazing how many people have suddenly decided at the same time to put a hot chocolate station in. All not influenced by the crap on Instagram

We had one last year! Teen dd was really excited to set it up and it had been such a hard few months I wasn't going to deprive her of a tiny bit of distraction / fun.

We have an area in our kitchen where the kettle and coffee machine live so we utilised that. I got a nice red and green fabric/ felt tray liner thing and put it out and we added hot chocolate stirrers (wrapped), kilner jars with sprinkles, shortbread, candy canes and marshmallows

We had our Christmas mugs out and there was squirty cream in the fridge. It looked so cute when it was all set up and it wasn't in the way at all.

DD loved it and when her friends called over they loved it too.

She then got a hotel chocolat velevtizer for Christmas so that has been placed next to the kettle and coffee machine all year (and used all year too) and I will definitely set up the station again this year.

I don't have instagram and have never shared a photo of it, it is for our pleasure only and I love how it looks.

It's so cosy, we live in an old 180 year old farmhouse, so our kitchen is not minimalist

Amazing how many people have suddenly decided at the same time to put a hot chocolate station in. All not influenced by the crap on Instagram hmm

Why do you care? Why the need to sneer at people?

There's a whole world outside of Instagram and those of us who don't have accounts do still manage to hear about things from other sources like alternative social media channels, Mumsnet, friends etc.

The reason people are probably feeling the need to pointedly distance themselves from the Insta influencers is because anyone who is merely considering a hot chocolate station has been accused on this thread of "performative twaddle" and other similar sneery insults. It's bloody hot chocolate. Most of us on the thread who think it sounds like it might be nice are just normal mums who thought maybe their kids would enjoy it. It doesn't imply that we get sucked into every trend going or that we are competitive or show offs or whatever other ridiculous assertions are being implied. You'd think that would be OK on a parenting site. To just have an opinion on something harmless that your kids might like.

I don't have a hot chocolate station, but I do have my festive bowl of chocolates out on the hallway table (usually from December 1st, but it's already out this year!)
There's only DH and me, with toddler DD so we don't tend to demolish a whole bowl in a few days but I do like to pick one up as I'm heading out or if I'm just having 5 mins peace! If they were in a cupboard, I'd forget they were there.

Last year I had my "alternative festive fruit bowl" that I definitely enjoyed!

@RepentBirthingPersonFucker

Amazing how many people have suddenly decided at the same time to put a hot chocolate station in. All not influenced by the crap on Instagram

Who cares if they are? It's just putting some stuff in a convenient place in the kitchen. People have been storing tea and sugar in caddies near the teapot for decades before social media was invented.

I have a Herbal Tea Station, aka box upon box of the rank stinky feckers bought during a health kick fad, which I don't know how best to ethically dispose if.

@MsSquiz

I don't have a hot chocolate station, but I do have my festive bowl of chocolates out on the hallway table (usually from December 1st, but it's already out this year!) There's only DH and me, with toddler DD so we don't tend to demolish a whole bowl in a few days but I do like to pick one up as I'm heading out or if I'm just having 5 mins peace! If they were in a cupboard, I'd forget they were there.

Last year I had my "alternative festive fruit bowl" that I definitely enjoyed!

I can assure you if you had a teenage son, you wouldn't do this

No hot chocolate station here, because hot chocolate is vile and only DS12 drinks it. The tub of powder sits out on the worktop next to the tea bags and sugar though

I do have my bowl of festive chocolates out too though! December is the month to get fat after all, and I am excellent at rising to the challenge.

I think it's quite sweet for a weekly film afternoon with the kids but it's not something I could do due to a tall counter surfing dog. Same as a snack basket.

We have to keep advent calendars on the highest shelf after a slight mishap a few years ago that ended with a phone call to the vets (fortunately only a small amount of chocolate was consumed by said dog!) no nice food centred displays in this house.

I like the sides clear if possible. Mainly because our kitchen is so tiny that anything extra left out means there’s no surface to prep anything.

I make hot chocolate with milk in a saucepan and then hot chocolate flakes. Leaving out a pint of milk on the side to go off and a random saucepan might not look very festive.

@weemouse

I think this week was the first most of us had heard of this being a "thing".

It is of course just another fad driven by Instagram bollocks of a photo perfect moment.

Pure pish.

I guess stuffing the various flavour sachets into a tin in the cupboard rather defeats the idea 😆

We don’t have one. On the odd occasion someone fancies a hot chocolate they’ll make one. That might include a trip to buy squirty cream and marshmallows if they can be bothered or might not.

The idea of a hot chocolate station is almost as annoyingly 'for show' as the stunt pineapples of Regency legend, and a deeply weird thread I remember from on here from some years back, from a poster who had a staged 'washing up area' -- with expensive wooden-handled washing up brushes stored in a ceramic canister, expensive washing-up liquid (or it might have been cheap washing up liquid in an expensive washing up liquid bottle) etc.

I think the most upsetting thing on this thread is the use of squirty cream.

@SmallBoyFury

I think the most upsetting thing on this thread is the use of squirty cream.

What?! President squirty cream is divine, M&S do a chocolatey one which DH and the kids love too

I think the most upsetting thing on this thread is the use of squirty cream.

Not as upsetting as knowing that some people are not buying squirty cream at all, but squirty fake cream 'topping' made from hydrogenated vegetable oil, like Elmlea. Boak.

If you must have a Hot Chocolate Station then at least take it seriously.

Also: Mug Huggers. WTF? How are you supposed to tip the mug to your mouth to drink and not spill it everywhere, with that whopping great thing stuck on it? It's a biscuit. Just leave it on the side.

@SmallBoyFury

I think the most upsetting thing on this thread is the use of squirty cream.

It's absolutely rank and enjoyed by people who don't understand food

I have never heard of a hot chocolate station before reading this post. But, I do make hot chocolate with marshmallows and squirty cream on Sundays when we get home from swimming and last couple of days too as it has been so cold. I put everything back in the cupboard thought after I have made it.