Ensuring that your catered spread includes a number of hot foods and beverages is integral for a wedding reception in the winter. The meal might not start for a short period of time after your guests enter the venue, but they can warm up by helping themselves to a hot drink. A selection of coffee and tea will be important, but you may also want to speak with your catering service about setting up a hot chocolate station. This is an idea that children and adults alike will appreciate — likely to the point that there's a crowd around it throughout much of the event. Here are some tips for setting up a hot chocolate station.
Have Lots Of Toppings
There will be some guests who are content with serving themselves a cup of hot chocolate, but others will get a kick out of customizing their beverage until it's worthy of sharing on social media. To this end, it's fun to offer a variety of hot chocolate toppings that your guests will enjoy. Most notably, you'll want an ample supply of whipped cream, but there other ingredients that people will appreciate. Crumbled cookies, miniature marshmallows, nuts, chocolate chips, and chocolate and caramel syrups are all toppings that people will use.
Provide Non-Dairy Options
It's important to remember that some of your wedding guests won't likely be able to consume foods that contain dairy. This is something that you'll need to consider when you're developing the entire menu, but it's especially critical if you're choosing a hot chocolate station because of the presence of dairy in this beverage. Fortunately, your catering professional can provide a wide range of non-dairy products for people to use for hot chocolate. For example, rice milk, almond milk, and oat milk are all suitable dairy alternatives that can work well in this application.
Include Complimentary Snacks
You may also wish to speak to your caterer about providing a few types of complimentary snacks on the hot chocolate station. Long, thin cookies can be enjoyable to eat while sipping hot chocolate, and some of your guests may use these cookies as makeshift (and edible) stir sticks. For a December event, think about offering candy canes. Not only can they be good for stirring a mug of hot chocolate, but they'll also slowly melt and add some mint flavor to this hot drink. Ask your caterer about other hot chocolate stations that they have prepared to see what other ideas might work for you.
For more information, contact a wedding catering service.
