Hot Chocolate and Dessert Bar

Hot Chocolate and Dessert Bar
When I throw a party I like to think of the event in stages and always make efforts to move the guests from one area of the house to another versus spending all our time gathered in the kitchen. For that reason I tend to migrate the location of the courses; appetizers in the living room, entrees in the dining room, dessert in the family room or back porch etc. When I hosted a Christmas Open house this year I served the buffet in the dining room and I used our study as the "dessert room".

The dessert room offered a hot chocolate bar that included treats to amp up your hot chocolate as well as adult libations to really take it to next. Along side the hot chocolate I also served a sampling of desserts on a tiered serving tower. On the bottom level I had white and dark chocolate peppermint fudge, for the middle layer I served whole fresh strawberries and topped the third layer with an assortment of Christmas cookies.

The hot chocolate bar included insulated pitchers of hot chocolate accompanied with whipped cream, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, toffee crumbles and crushed peppermint candy. Additionally the adults could add a kick to their hot chocolate by spiking it with Kahlua, Baileys or Peppermint Schnapps.

Having a "dessert room" made it seem more special a than if I had included the desserts along side the rest of the buffet and it was appreciated by both kiddos and adults... I will likely do this again next year :)