 Hello, everyone, I am Katie Henry with NDSU Extension in Cavalier County. And today I thought it would be fun to show you how to make our beverage mixes in a jar. They are so simple, easy, and they end up looking very nice and cute. And it's a fun gift to share with someone. The front side of our publication has the number and the number is FN1625, beverage mixes in a jar. And it just has some information as to why it's a good idea to do this, how to do it, those basic things. On the backside, we've got four delicious recipes and little cards that you can cut out to attach to the jar once you have assembled the mix. The four recipes are double chocolate peppermint candy hot cocoa mix, French vanilla coffee mix, spiced tea mix, and mint candy coffee mix. All of them are delicious. Today we are going to do the double chocolate peppermint candy hot cocoa mix just because chocolate is my favorite. And so I thought this would be an awesome gift for me to receive. So maybe it would be a good gift for me to give to others as well. But all of them are delicious. I just prefer chocolate. The ingredients are one cup instant skim milk powder, one cup unsweetened cocoa powder, one cup white sugar, a half a teaspoon salt, a half a cup crushed peppermint candy, and a half a cup of mini semi sweet chocolate chips. And remember when it comes to the powders like the milk powder cocoa powder, you want to make sure that you spoon the ingredients in to the one cup measuring cup, and then you level it off to make sure you have an accurate measurement. The powders might compact if you just stick the whole measuring cup in there, and you don't want to have too much of one ingredient and not enough of another. And so you want to make sure that you spoon it in and level it off. The first ingredient that we're going to add it to our food processor. This is something that will help us make sure that the mix gets mixed, as well as it can. The first ingredient is the skim milk powder. So it's one cup of skim milk powder. We just add that to our food processor. The next ingredient is one cup of the unsweetened cocoa powder. So we just add that as well into our food processor. The next ingredient is one cup of white sugar this is granulated sugar not powdered sugar but granulated sugar so we have that so far we have three ingredients. The fourth ingredient that we want to add is one or excuse me half a teaspoon of salt. And we keep our crushed peppermint candy and our chocolate chips for later first we need to mix this really well in our food processor so we put the cover on. Make sure it's locked on and then we just pulse a few times to try to get it all corporate incorporated together. That looks pretty well incorporated. And keep in mind it's a powder so a lot of times a little powder will pop out, you probably will have to make sure that you get the powder off of everything when you're done because it does tend to get all over the place, you take off your container off of your food processor and then you get a bowl and I like to use this one that has the spout on it because we are going to have to put it into jars. I just add all of these ingredients that we pulsed together into a fine mix here and then the recipe says to add the crushed peppermint candy so it's a half a cup of crushed peppermint candy. And I just took one of those giant thick candy canes, really thick ones. And just crushed it I just broke it apart and used my, my mallet, my kitchen mallet to break it into smaller pieces. And then we add our half a cup of mini semi sweet chocolate chips. And remember, when we're doing this food safety is up most important so we want to make sure that we wash your hands and everything. I did that prior to starting, but we want to make sure that we, especially since we're giving it as gifts or that it's going to sit in a jar. We want to make sure that food safety is important. And on the forefront. So we want to make sure everything's clean, dry, ready to go. Once you have the ingredients into the bowl then you just take a spoon and you mix it together. To try to get all those chocolate chips and the candy pieces, the candy cane pieces or crushed candy pieces, all incorporated into the powder. And then it says store in an airtight court sized container and decorate the container as desired. So what I decided to do. I can use a court size jar and I do have a court size jar, but this is several servings all in one container, and I have two people that I would like to give it to who I don't think would use more than this size. So I'm going to split it between two pint size jars rather than one court size jar. And that works just, just fine as well I've done that before. One thing that I do want to point out is that I do have a spot on this which makes it much easier for me, but I also have a regular regular mouth jar. And so I like to use my funnel because then it helps me get it into the jar a little bit better. So I just put the funnel on, and then I pour half of the ingredients it should be able to be split evenly between the two jars. You can hear the candy pieces going into the jar. According to the measurements on my jar, this is about half, a little bit, quite even in there. Okay, so that's about half. I take the funnel off and I'll set that aside and put that in the other jar later, since I'm not using a court size jar. Once I have all of the ingredients into this jar, then what I what I like to do is put the tag on the outside. And this takes as double chocolate peppermint candy hot cocoa mix directions for each serving place one third cup cocoa mix in a mug, and stir in one cup boiling water. So it says specifically what to do in order to get your hot cocoa mix. The only other thing or suggestion I would have is to maybe include the ingredients of what you put in the jar in the first place, just because people do have food allergies or food sensitivities or they are just curious about what is exactly in this mix. And so, especially with things like milk and chocolate you want to make sure that you include that you have had that as one of the ingredients in the mix. And so you can punch a hole in these or I just like to put some tape on it and just tape it to the outside of the jar. So it's all ready to go with the directions and they stay on there. And then what I like to do is put the lid on and make sure that it's secure and tight. And then I just cut a square fabric and I put that on top, and I secure this with a jar room. And it just goes right over the fabric it doesn't matter that you have fabric on there. You just want to make sure that you get it so that it goes on there evenly. So once you get it starting to look fun and festive. You can also add a ribbon and so I have pre cut and pre tied a ribbon that will fit over this jar lid as well. So I just slip that on to add a little something extra. And then sometimes what I do even beyond that is I go and pull a few sprigs of greens from trees that I have in my yard or sometimes I will purchase artificial flowers or artificial flowers from that store and I will just include that as a little bit extra decoration. Now if you're going to use these as stocking stuffers or that kind of thing, or someone's not going to open them for a while you wouldn't want to use fresh greens because they'll get dry and brittle and then they'll just fall apart. But if you are going to hand deliver this shortly in a few minutes, then that might be something that you would like to add just as a little something extra that's a little festive. So I hope you enjoyed seeing how easy it is literally it just took minutes to make our or put together our beverage mixes in a jar, and they are delicious and they are fun. And I hope you find as much enjoyment giving and drinking as well. Thank you.