Recipes from Julie Van Rosendaal: Taste trendy hot cocoa bombs at home

Cocoa bombs are all the rage right now — the chocolate spheres filled with cocoa mix and mini marshmallows are selling out at stores across Alberta, and the companies making them can hardly keep up with the orders.

• Watch an Alberta baker's trendy hot chocolate bombs melt into a drink.

Their popularity has undoubtedly been propelled by social media, as people share Instagram stories and TikTok videos pouring hot milk over the balls, set in a mug, to melt them, thus releasing their marshmallow-ey insides and transforming the mixture into a mug of hot chocolate.

Method:

Hard plastic and silicone moulds are available if you want to attempt to make your own, but they're tricky to find right now, and you could wing it using a small balloon.

Start with some chocolate — chips or chunks — and melt them slowly in the microwave or in a double boiler on the stovetop. If you want to temper your chocolate, it's not as tricky as it sounds, but it's not necessary. Tempering makes it smooth and snappy, and prevents it from blooming.

If you're working with chocolate chips, stir frequently until there are no more lumps, and the chocolate is smooth.

From here, you could make spheres or domes. Domes are a half sphere you could set over a pile of mini marshmallows in the bottom of your mug for a similar effect.

Blow your balloons up about halfway, and then let out air until it's about the size you want your sphere or dome to be. The balloons tend to be rounder this way, rather than just blowing a small amount of air into them, which tends to make them misshapen.

Tie each balloon off and then dip in the melted chocolate. Dip halfway to make a dome, or a bowl. You can use the same technique if you want edible bowls for serving ice cream or fruit. Or, dip all the way to the neck of the balloon, tipping it on its side or using a spoon to help coat it completely.

To make a bowl, set the balloon upright on a piece of parchment or foil. It will then have a flat bottom. Or, to keep the dome round, invert it onto the top of a glass.

For a sphere, clip the tied end with a clip or clamp and suspend it over a bowl on a bamboo skewer, chopstick or something similar, to keep it from touching any surface as it sets.

Once the chocolate has completely cooled and set, pop the balloon and remove it.

For chocolate domes, put a pile of mini marshmallows and some hot chocolate mix — I use about equal parts icing sugar and cocoa — in the bottom of a mug and invert the chocolate dome overtop.

For a full sphere, pour a spoonful of hot cocoa mix in through the hole, and fill about halfway or more with mini marshmallows.

You can then seal the hole with more chocolate, or plug it with a large marshmallow, or carefully invert it into a mug.

Pour hot milk overtop to melt the sphere and stir to turn it into hot chocolate.

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