Food
Drinking chocolate
Introduction
We put 10 drinking chocolate powders to the taste test.
Hot chocolate drinks are great winter warmers, listed and priced along with espresso coffees in cafés. The best way to make one at home is to melt hot chocolate in milk, but simply stirring in a powder is quicker and cheaper.
More than 200 home testers trialled the drinking chocolates - and three products topped the tasting.
Our home trial
The drinking chocolates were blind-tasted by 201 home testers. Each received three coded samples and prepared the drinks following manufacturers’ instructions.
They rated the taste and strength, then reported adjustments they made to improve the chocolate. They gave an overall rating and said whether they would buy the product. See the tasting results to find out how they rated the drinking chocolates.
Products tasted:
- Cadbury Drinking Chocolate
- Green & Black's Organic Hot Chocolate Drink
- Hansells Drinking Chocolate
- Home Brand Drinking Chocolate Instant
- Jarrah Choc O'Lait
- Jarrah Chocolatté Frothy Twist
- Trade Aid Organic Drinking Chocolate
- Vittoria Dark Chocochino
- Vittoria Original Chocochino
- WeightWatchers Drinking Chocolate
Just add water – or milk
Once, you started from scratch with a spoon of cocoa powder then added boiling water, sugar and milk.
The drinking chocolates in our home trial come with sugar added and the tasters needed to add hot milk or water (we didn’t provide marshmallows).
Triallists preferred the products made with milk. The three products made with water contained milk powder but some triallists couldn’t resist adding milk. Hansells Drinking Chocolate gives the option of preparing it with water or milk (it contains milk powder). So half the people who tried it prepared the drink with hot water and the rest prepared it with milk. The milk drink was a favourite.