Hot Chocolate Popcorn Balls {DIY Holiday Gift Basket}

 These Hot Chocolate Popcorn Balls are perfect homemade food gift to give for the holidays! Sweet, salty, and crunchy, wrapped in a homemade gift basket! This recipe was created for an Easy Gift basket, as part of a sponsored post for Collective Bias®.

Hey guys!

I am sharing with you today an easy gift idea for the holidays. It is the season of gift exchange with friends, family and loved ones. And truth be told, most times I run out of ideas for certain people on my list. One of the easiest gifts to give a loved one is a combination of simple favorites. I made these hot chocolate popcorn balls to use in a gift basket for a co-worker that loves movies, popcorn and oddly Slim Jims. A weird combination right? But to each their own! And gifting is all about making the other person happy 🙂

I know he loves sweets and salty treats (who doesn’t) so I decided to use hot chocolate mix to make some popcorn balls that I packaged with a few of his favorite things in a gift basket. After making a trip to Target with the goal of assembling this gift basket, I picked up everything I needed and more because well, it is Target and things just seem to have wings and fly into carts. Moving along.

First I make the hot chocolate popcorn balls, resulting in a sweet and crunchy combination of M&Ms, popcorn and marshmallows.

Then package them into treat bags, tied with cute Christmas ribbons. It is a messy business, I should warn you.

The next step will be to gather all your items going into the gift basket. Because my friend loves movies and I wanted that as a theme, I used a popcorn bucket. You might use a beautiful weave basket instead. Assemble the bucket.

Wrap with clear plastic wrap and ribbons once you have everything in the bucket. This can be ten times more beautiful but I am so NOT crafty and was even lucky to get a nice bow :p

However, this was an easy gift to assemble and I am very happy I did. I know my friend will appreciate it even more because it is common knowledge that I am not crafty AT ALL and usually stay away from handmade projects.

If you have a movie lover on your Christmas list, consider this easy gift basket, filled with hot chocolate popcorn balls, for them!!

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Hot Chocolate Popcorn Balls

Popcorn balls wrapped in decadent hot chocolate

Prep Time 30 minutes

Total Time 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 6 cups popcorn
• 3 tablespoons Swiss Miss hot chocolate mix
• ¼ cup butter,
• 10 ounces marshmallows
• 1 cup M&Ms
• Nonstick cooking spray
• ⅓ cup chocolate chips, melted (optional, topping)

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, toss popcorn with hot chocolate mix.
2. In a medium saucepan, melt butter. Cook stirring until brown. Add in marshmallows and stir constantly until marshmallows are melted and mixture is smooth. Pour over popcorn mixture immediately and mix to coat. Add in M&Ms.
3. Spray an ice cream scoop or your hands with nonstick cooking spray. Shape popcorn into 2-inch balls. Place balls on parchment paper and allow to cool. Drizzle with melted chocolate if desired. Wrap popcorn balls in decorative bags.

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