Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate (with video!)

This easy slow cooker hot chocolate recipe makes a mega batch of rich, creamy hot chocolate right in your Crock-Pot–perfect for feeding a crowd! It tastes amazing, is simple to make, and uses ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen. You’ll never use powdered cocoa mix again!

☕️ The Best Hot Chocolate Recipe for a Crowd

Here are SugarHero, we are obsessed with hot chocolate recipes. There’s something so cozy and comforting about curling up with a mug of chocolate (topped with lots of whipped cream, of course!) and savoring this little dessert dressed up as a drink. Plain, flavored, made with chocolate or cocoa powder…it’s always hot chocolate season ’round here.

The only thing better than a mug of rich and creamy homemade hot chocolate is a giant POT of rich and creamy homemade hot chocolate, and that’s exactly what we’re going to make with this super-easy Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate recipe.

By using a slow cooker, you can easily make a BIG batch of decadent hot chocolate without breaking a sweat.

It’s perfect for feeding a crowd, and you can get it going in the background while you do other things. Oh, and the best part? It tastes like a melted chocolate bar, it’s THAT creamy and rich.

My family asks me to make this recipe at least twice a month all winter long, and we love it–not just because it tastes great, but because it’s so convenient! The genius of using a slow cooker is that everything can be prepared in advance, and then the hot chocolate cooks while you do other things.

Most often, I will get everything started before we go out sledding, or snowball fighting, (or shoveling snow, siiiiiigh), and it’s always so nice to walk back into the house to find our piping hot chocolate ready and waiting for us.

If you love the sound of this hot chocolate, don’t miss other reader favorites like Nutella Hot Chocolate, Orange Hot Chocolate, and Peppermint Hot Chocolate!

🧾 What You’ll Need

🍫 Ingredients

One of the BEST things about this slow cooker hot chocolate is that the ingredient list is short and sweet! Here are a few tips and substitution suggestions: (Links are affiliate links and I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.)

• Chocolate: Since most of the flavor comes from the chocolate, using a delicious, high-quality chocolate will give you the best results. Any semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate with 55-70% cacao is perfect. You can chop up your favorite chocolate bars, or pick up some dark chocolate chips — I love using Ghirardelli 60% dark chocolate chips in this recipe. Just avoid low-quality, waxy chocolate chips without much flavor–if they’re not delicious to eat, they won’t be delicious in a drink. In my opinion, milk chocolate is too sweet for this recipe, but if you are a real milk chocolate lover, you might try doing half milk and half dark chocolate.
• Cocoa powder: Dutch-processed (alkalized) cocoa powder is my recommendation, but you can use natural cocoa powder if that’s what you have. Just as with chocolate, using the best quality ingredients will give you the best outcome.
• Sweetened condensed milk: Make sure you’re using condensed milk, not evaporated milk. Sweetened condensed milk gives this recipe an irresistible caramel undertone. If you don’t have it, you can add 1/3 cup granulated sugar to the ingredients in the beginning instead. At the end of cooking, taste the hot chocolate and add more sugar if desired.
• Milk: I’ve made this with 1% and 2% milk, and couldn’t tell the difference–both worked beautifully. I would say skim is probably a little skimpy (hah) for a truly rich cup of chocolate. Whole milk would be delicious and make the drink extra-rich.
• Cream: Heavy cream or whipping cream are both fine. You could substitute half-and-half, but because milk fat is the thing that makes this drink so dang creamy, using half-and-half will yield a thinner drink.

🥄 Equipment

It’s probably not a surprise that you will need a slow cooker to make slow cooker hot chocolate! For a regular batch, a 4-6 quart slow cooker is the perfect size.

This recipe also doubles well, and if you double it, you’ll want to use a 7-8 quart slow cooker so your hot chocolate has plenty of room. Here’s a great 8 quart slow cooker to try.

Other than a slow cooker, the only other thing you’ll need is a whisk. Well that, and a serious craving for hot chocolate!

📋 How to Make Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate

Can you dump a bunch of ingredients into a bowl? Then you can make this hot chocolate! Grab the full printable recipe down in the recipe card, and check out how easily this comes together:

• Add your chopped chocolate or chocolate chips to your slow cooker.
• Pour in the milk and cream.

• Add the remaining ingredients (sweetened condensed milk, cocoa, vanilla, and salt), and whisk briefly.
• Cover the Crock-Pot, and turn the temperature to low.
• Go about your day! Read, clean, try a new dance move…live your best life.

• If you’re around, you can whisk the hot chocolate about every 45 minutes, to help it melt and heat evenly, but it’s not absolutely necessary. If you cook it on low, you can safely ignore it throughout the process.
• After about 2 hours, the chocolate will be completely melted and it will be hot and ready to drink. Bottoms up!

• This cocoa is great on its own, but it is DIVINE when topped with softly whipped cream and chocolate shavings. The way the cream melts into the chocolate… drool
• Alternately, forgo the whipped cream and opt for a pile of marshmallows and a drizzle of chocolate syrup instead.
• Peppermint version: Add 1 tsp peppermint extract to the ingredients. Once cooked, taste and add more if desired. (Peppermint extracts vary a lot in strength, so you’ll need to rely on your taste buds to guide you.) Top with whipped cream and crushed peppermint candies.
• Salted Caramel version: Add 1/2 cup of salted caramels to the ingredients and cook as normal. At the end, top with a thick drizzle of salted caramel sauce.
• Orange version: Start with an organic orange, and use a vegetable peeler to remove the thin outer layer of orange rind. (Avoid the inner white layer, called the “pith” — this is very bitter.) Add the rind to the slow cooker at the beginning of the cooking process, and let it cook with the hot chocolate to infuse it with a vibrant orange flavor. Strain out the pieces of rind before serving.

Storage Instructions

I know from personal experience that this recipe keeps VERY well! I made quite a lot of it when I was testing recipes, and quickly found myself with way too much hot chocolate for my family to drink at once.

You can store leftover hot chocolate in a container in the refrigerator for up to a week. You will want to whisk well before dishing it out and heating it up, because the chocolate has a tendency to settle on the bottom.

If you want to keep it longer than that, I’ve also had success freezing it! Transfer it to freezer containers or freezer gallon-size zip-top bags. If you’re using the bags, make sure to freeze them on a baking sheet so they freeze flat.

Let it defrost in the refrigerator overnight, then whisk well and dish up as usual.

❤️ More Hot Chocolate Recipe You’ll Love

After you make slow cooker hot chocolate, try one of these other delicious drink recipes!

• Orange Hot Chocolate
• Nutella Hot Chocolate
• Peppermint Hot Chocolate
• Lavender Hot Chocolate
• Pumpkin Hot Chocolate
• Hazelnut White Hot Chocolate
• Hot Chocolate Floats

Don’t miss the step-by-step tutorial showing how to make Slow Cooker Hot Chocolate – check out the web story here!