Mexican Hot Chocolate Brownies for the Holidays!

This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)

What’s inside a Betty Crocker box? MANY possibilities! Sure, whenever you get a Devil’s Food
Cake box or a Fudge Brownie box there are recipe steps in the back of it, but that’s just the beginning of many things you can do with it. You can use the contents of the box as a base start for many recipes.

Jump to Recipe

I wanted to do a spin on the traditional holiday brownies and, since my kids have grown up surrounded by Mexican culture, I decided to create these Mexican Hot Chocolate Brownies. It was the perfect treat to get my toddlers in the kitchen with me, as they get super excited about anything related to chocolate.

Using a Betty Crocker’s Delights Supreme Chocolate Chunk Brownie mix was a good idea to have most of the process done, while also allowing us to customize it. This is a great recipe to cook over the holidays, especially if you have small children who like to help in the kitchen and you’d like an easy and convenient way to make them feel included.

What’s the difference between Mexican Hot Chocolate and regular hot chocolate?

Mexican Hot Chocolate is known and beloved because of its distinct aroma and flavor, as it goes beyond the yummy cocoa taste. It is made of a mix of cocoa beans grounded with almonds, sugar, and spices like nutmeg and cinnamon, and sometimes vanilla. You can easily find it in most supermarkets as thick, circular bars you dissolve by cooking over milk or water. Once dissolved, people traditionally beat or blend the chocolate’s surface really fast using a “molinillo” or wooden whisk to create froth. It is traditionally drunk over the holidays or in cold weather, usually with pan dulce to go along with it.

To turn our regular brownies into Mexican Hot Chocolate brownies, we first followed the recipe steps behind the Betty Crocker Delights Supreme Chocolate Chunk Brownies box, I asked each of my kiddos to add their own new ingredient: my oldest daughter was in charge of the cinnamon and her sister added a few pinches of cayenne pepper. Don’t worry, the brownies don’t come out spicy at all, but some iterations of Mexican hot chocolate do carry a hint of chili in it, and I wanted to include a slight nod to that.

The best part was the frosting: I wanted to make a chocolate buttercream frosting to top the brownies and make them more decadent, but instead of using the typical cocoa powder, I grated one Mexican hot chocolate bar and added it to the mix. The result was a slightly brown frosting with yummy cinnamon and chocolatey hints that were very addictive!

I really enjoyed the afternoon cooking with my daughters, even if the kitchen ended up a bit messy, I kept them busy for at least half an hour AND we had many yummy Mexican Hot Chocolate brownies to eat while we cleaned afterwards! It was a win-win!

Let me know in the comments what are your favorite ways of using Betty Crocker mixes!