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If there is something that screams holiday cheer and keeps you warm on cold December days, it has to be a delicious cup of cocoa or a holiday coffee concoction from your favorite barista! So when I was deciding what to serve at my first Cookies & Cocoa Holiday Brunch, I knew that the first holiday bar in my home would be my seasonal favorite for winter mornings, a decked out Coffee and Cocoa Bar!
After ordering rentals and the coffee to go in them, I started an adventure of finding all the different things one adds to their winter warmers, from marshmallows to candy canes to liquors and syrups, I made a coffee and cocoa bar that was a delight to children and adults alike, along with giving me a look into how to best spend my money next time I host this holiday bar.
In this post, I’ll be going through everything I did for my own bar setup, what was most popular with my guests, and all the basics to help you build and host your own holiday hot drink bar this season that you and all your loved ones will adore!
WHAT GOES INTO A COFFEE & COCOA BAR
For the basics of setting up a brunch bar like this one, I wanted to make sure to have the basics for everyone’s morning cup of joe but include all the festive mix-ins so that guests could also have fun creating custom coffee cocktails for kicking off the holidays! Here are the different groups that made up my own Coffee and Cocoa Bar and that I think are the basics for when you are designing your own, which I’ll go into more detail about below!
Coffee, Cocoa, & Hot Water
Cream & Sugar
Syrups & Liquors
Toppings & Garnishes
Cups, Stir Sticks, & Other Serving Dishes
COFFEE, COCOA, & HOT WATER
The star player of the bar is, of course, the coffee and the cocoa that guests will use as a base for creating their holiday drinks!
The easiest way to serve a dual bar like this is to have two large urns that can keep everything hot throughout the event, one for coffee and one for hot water. I placed the cocoa mix between them so it could be used as a mixer for either straight cocoa or for making cafe mocha style coffees, with the hot water making it easy to include tea bags into your bar too! If you want to buy your coca mix, single serve packets of mix are also a great option to consider; especially when they come in great assortments of holiday flavors! In my case I turned one of my kitchen jars into a holder for a large batch of mix I made myself.
There are tons of different dry cocoa recipes out there, and below I’ve given the proportions of what I made. Many of them use dry milk, which I have done in the past and loved, but omitted it here and many of my guests told me how much more they enjoyed it! So, the simple recipe is:
1 part cocoa
4 parts powdered sugar
Powdered sugar is the trick here, it melts and blends with cocoa powder so much better than granulated sugar! I also like to add a little salt to the mix, but it’s a teaspoon or two for the whole jar. I put a ¼ cup measuring cup in the jar for guests to doll out as much as they wanted, and they just added water until desired cocoa was created!
For the coffee urn, you can choose to brew the coffee yourself or to buy it from a local coffee shop; and of the two I greatly prefer ordering out when I can! Many shops have full gallons for sale and they come with to-go cups and lids, stir sticks, sweeteners, and all the basic coffee bar necessities so that you aren’t worrying about them yourself! There are also rental options that can brew coffee for you, they are a bit more work filling and cleaning out coffee grounds and are more expensive than their nonbrewing counterparts.
CREAM & SUGAR
For the coffee side of this coffee bar, the typical cream and sugar always need to make an appearance, but I also like to add a creamer or two to the mix as well! Now I went a little overboard buying different holiday creamers, when in reality people were much more into the liquors they could add to their coffees instead. In the future, I’ll be doing my favorite holiday creamer, Peppermint Mocha, and a French Vanilla and leave it there
As far as sugar and sweetener options go, I generally get packets of raw sugar, white sugar, and my favorite natural artificial sweetener; but, when I ordered coffee from my local Starbucks, it came with a bunch of these packets in a variety of options already! Generally, as long as you have one sugar and one sweetener option, you’ll be good!
SYRUPS & LIQUORS
Next are some of the favorite additions to any hot drink, flavored syrups and liquors for crafting one of a kind concoctions! I like to have at least one kind of syrup to add for guests that don’t want an alcoholic drink to start their day, so along with the always popular chocolate syrup, for a festive holiday bar I go for flavors like salted caramel, peppermint, or other seasonal choices that can be used for flavoring cocoa too!
Some of my favorite syrups that I used in this bar were:
Caramel Syrup
Chocolate Syrup
Creme de Menthe Syrup
With syrups covered, I moved on to what I knew would be my guests favorite part, the liquor additions for their morning coffees! With so many coffee cocktails being popular as end of the night drinks, I took my lead from the liquors used in them to decide on the selection for my coffee bar.
The liquors I used in my bar were:
Amaretto
Bourbon
Bailey’s Irish Cream
Peppermint Schnapps
Kahlua
Out of the myriad of different syrups and liquors I chose, Amaretto and Bourbon were the preferred choice by a long shot for all the adults drinking coffee with the syrups and creamers going far less quickly. Bailey’s was also a popular choice for the coffee drinkers, which I think also added to less of the creamers being needed too! For my next bar, these three will be the liquors I serve, along with creating some new signage to teach my guests how to make their favorite coffee cocktails!
TOPPINGS & GARNISHES
To literally top off each beverage, the last additions to this bar was an assortment of sweets and sprinkles to finish each winter warmer with some holiday cheer! Depending on your budget, you don’t have to go overboard here but the toppings and fun garnishes are always a great way to set your bar up to be extra memorable and leave you with delicious holiday treats after people go home! Now I had an assortment of different toppings for this cocoa and coffee bar, partly for fun but also to see what were the things my guests actually used most. The most popular choices that I’ll also be keeping in all my future coffee and cocoa bars are:
Marshmallows: As might be expected, marshmallows were a first pick for all goers of the cocoa bar! I always go for mini marshmallows for my setups, but I love the idea of creating my next bar with an assortment of flavored marshmallows! I found the shop, Sweetniks, which features all sorts of seasonal custom flavored marshmallows, which I will certainly be using for my starting point for this venture in the future!
Whipped Cream: Both a popular topping and a great base for sprinkles, candy bits, chocolate sauce, and cherries, whipped cream was second place and almost every drink was topped with it!
Crushed Candy Canes: While most used in the cocoa, everyone loved the candy cane pieces for festiv-ifying their drinks, these are a must for infusing your bar with holiday spirit!
Sprinkles: Beloved by every kiddo that came through the cocoa line, sprinkles are a must if you have children attending your party! I just mixed up a couple holiday sprinkle sets I had in a bowl and it was perfect, but for the adults candy canes were far more beloved. No kids, you can skip sprinkles!
While these were my top four, you can find all sorts of cookies and candies for your garnishes and to add that extra pizazz to your bar, the limit is your creativity! But make sure that they are things you like yourself because you are bound to have extras, only a couple of each of my garnishes end up getting taken but the variety always makes for pretty displays! More of my favorite toppings and garnishes that I love for coffee and cocoa bars include:
Ground Cinnamon
Maraschino Cherries
Candy Canes - I didn’t have these because I crushed all my candy canes instead!
Chocolate Covered Spoons
Pirouline Cookie Sticks - I was giving away cookies so I didn’t want them here, but I love seeing them as a garnish option!
CUPS, STIR STICKS, & OTHER SERVEWARE
Finally, the last pieces of your Coffee and Cocoa Bar are the cups, stir sticks, and all the little bowls, jars and baskets for holding all the different offerings you are giving for your guests cocoa concoctions!
Below is everything I included in my own bar setup including the beverage servers and cups I rented, but depending on how you choose to set your own bar up and how you want to display all your own offerings, some things will likely change on your own list!
Coffee Cups - either china, disposable, or both!
Coffee Collars - if you are using disposable cups
Stir Sticks
Hot Water Urns - one for coffee, one for hot water
Ice Tub with Ice -for Creamers & Liquors
Cocoa Mix Holder or Jar
Sugar & Sweetener Bowls
Toppings & Garnishes Bowls with Spoons
The coffee I ordered came with the travel cups, coffee collars, stir sticks, and other necessary items; but I also rented china coffee cups for people who were less on the go, and both were used pretty equally.
As I continue to craft cocoa and coffee bars at my annual holiday festivities, I’ll be sure to be adding any of my new favorites to these lists and further beautifying my bars with all kinds of new signs and DIY decorations. I’ll be updating this post as that happens, but in the meantime, I hope you use this as a guide for creating your own custom Cocoa and Coffee Bar for all your winter festivities this season!
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