The kids’ all-time favorite cold-weather drink is here to warm you up all winter long. We take whole milk, real cocoa powder, sugar, and milk chocolate chips to make up a big batch of Homemade Hot Chocolate! Use your slow cooker or Instant Pot and make the best hot chocolate you’ve ever had, essentially hands-free.

This post has been sponsored by Stanley. All opinions are my own. I only post about products that I actually use and really love!

Homemade Slow Cooker Hot Cocoa

I used to LOVE the outdoors. Like – love it so much I endured many Minnesota winters out on the ski hill, no matter HOW cold it was, and it was ALWAYS cold. “Too cold to ski” wasn’t really a thing that existed for us. I only remember a few times where we couldn’t actually do it because it was too dangerous.

Until very very recently, I hadn’t been out on the slopes in TWENTY YEARS.

Funny how that happens.

I decided that this year is the year to do the things, and do we have. As you might imagine though, things are a lot HARDER this year for so many reasons.

I won’t get into all of them here, but one thing we were considering when preparing to go up to the mountain was that there was NO food or beverages available to buy there, and NO warming shack or chalet.

That means packing in and packing out all the things, teaching kids how to put on ski and snowboard gear either in the elements or in the Suburban, and finding some creative way to make sure we can warm up from the inside AND the outside too.

How to keep your drink HOT on the slopes

When we head up to the mountain, we have to leave EARLY. There is limited access up there at Hurricane Ridge, and often people will get laughed out of there or have to wait for hours until people come down. One of the benefits (and drawbacks) of your home hill being one of the two remaining lift operations in the national parks!

That means we need to get things REALLY hot, really early in the morning, and have it stay hot for as long as it possibly can.

Enter, Stanley Drinkware.

I’ve been familiar with the Staley brand for as long as I have memories. My grandpa was in construction, and I distinctly remember that legendary big bottle and lunch pail being a part of their kitchen scenes.

Stanley has been around for over a century, and in that time they’ve really mastered the art of food storage, drinkware, camp cookware, and coolers and jugs!

For this post, we put the Classic Legendary Mug, the Classic Trigger-Action Travel Mug, the Adventure Stainless Steel Vacuum Bottle, the Master Unbreakable Hip Flask, and the Easy Fill Widemouth Flask to the test to see if not only they were “Built For Life”, but built for OUR life – which seems to be a little crazier than most.

We left our house at 7:30 AM on our first day out. The Classic Mug and the Trigger-Action Travel mug so we had hot coffee on the way. It kept things steamy hot, even for me, the notoriously slow coffee drinker, the WHOLE hour and a half drive.

Turns out that almost wasn’t early enough. We were almost ¾ of a mile back from the gate when the traffic was stopped and almost didn’t make it in the initial wave of cars.

Once we got up-mountain and suited up, it was off to the bunny hills with the lot of us.

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We didn’t make it through lunch before we were all sore and ready to call it for the day, and we came back to the truck really thankful that the Stanley Adventure Steel Vacuum Bottle had piping hot chocolate waiting for us all on the ride home.

It was so hot still that we couldn’t drink it right away!

Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate Ingredients

• Chocolate chips
• Milk
• Cream
• Vanilla
• Cocoa powder
• Sugar

How to make slow cooker hot chocolate

1. Dump everything in the slow cooker.
2. Turn onto low heat.
3. Let cook for 3-4 hours, stirring periodically.
4. Serve hot!

What kind of chocolate works best for slow cooker hot cocoa?

That largely depends on your personal preference. We use milk chocolate chips, typically, but you could also use semi-sweet or dark chocolate as well, and you don’t have to stick to chips, either.

If you want to order some fancy chocolate for this, check out this Belgian Milk Chocolate you can buy in a huge hunk from Amazon! Just grate it with a cheese grater before adding it to the slow cooker.

More to love:

• Slow Cooker Vegetable Beef Soup
• Slow Cooker Roast Beef Dinner
• Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe