Red Velvet Hot Chocolate with Heart Marshmallows or Cream Cheese Whipped Cream

I have a great Valentine’s drink for you and your special someone – red velvet hot chocolate!  Jeff and I looooove red velvet cupcakes.  Our wedding cake was a $9 grocery store red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting but it was our favorite ever cake.  Did you know that red velvet cake is just chocolate cake with red food coloring? The same can be done with hot chocolate.  Somehow, adding a few drops of red food coloring makes this drink so much more festive.  Add a couple heart marshmallows or whipped cream with cream cheese and you’ve got yourself the perfect Valentine’s drink to snuggle up with a loved one on a cold wintry night.

All you need to make “red velvet” hot chocolate is add a few drops of red food coloring to your favorite hot cocoa recipe.  I usually use this recipe here (though I find it too sweet so I cut out half the sugar).  I bet you can just add food coloring to instant hot chocolate mix and it would work, too!

Slowly add the food coloring and mix until the hot chocolate is a little red in color. I personally am not a big fan of the taste of red food coloring, for some reason I find it leaves a more bitter aftertaste than the other colors, so I just added enough to add a tint to the color:

To make the heart marshmallows, you can either make your own homemade marshmallows, like I did in this tutorial, or use store bought ones.  Since making your own marshmallows from scratch takes so much time and the marshmallows melt anyways, its much easier to just buy them.  All you need are jumbo marshmallows, mini heart cookie cutters and powdered sugar (not pictured):

Did you know Kraft makes jumbo-sized  marshmallows? There is the mini marshmallows and large marshmallows but I just discovered these EXTRA LARGE ones, too:

Because these marshmallows are so massive, they were perfect for cutting shapes out of them.  My sister also told me that at Target, they sell flattened marshmallows, meant for making s’mores. Those sound like they would work well, too!  All you have to do is slice the marshmallows so that they are shorter (I sliced each jumbo marshmallow into 4 slices) and rub the sticky sides in powdered sugar so that they aren’t sticky:

Then use a mini heart cookie cutter to cut out the hearts:

The  little hearts are pretty cute:

Pop them into your hot chocolate and you’ve got yourself a fun, romantic drink:

If you prefer whipped cream in your hot cocoa, you can make cream cheese whipped cream.  All you have to do is beat whipping cream as you normally would to make plain whipped cream, but add a spoonful of whipped cream cheese when the liquid starts to fluff up:

Add a dollop of the whipped cream to your red velvet hot chocolate, sprinkle some cocoa powder on top and here’s another fun version of this classic drink:

ENJOY!!

You might also like:

tagged as: chocolate, frugal february, fun, heart, valentine's day