The final hot chocolate in the Galaxy range, this is the traditional hot chocolate made with water. No extras with this one, you can make a good old fashioned hot water hot chocolate. This is something I can dig – boiling the kettle and making a nice cuppa.

This instant hot chocolate from Galaxy is interesting and a little different. I think of all the instant powdered ones, I like the frothy one best. This one, while simple to make, has a slightly different flavour. There is a bit of a powdered milk flavour in the hot chocolate and this, for me, is not as nice as the frothy hot chocolate but still a nice hot cup of hot chocolate.

I did try adding some marshmallows to this – well, one. I chopped it up so it was smaller and popped it in and this is where this hot chocolate was brilliant.  With the way the powder mixed well with the hot water it meant mixing the marshmallows in made it even better.

I think that if you like Galaxy chocolate, you might want to go for the frothy top or even getter, one of those ones that has the thick hot chocolate in it and zap it in the microwave. But if you want a hot chocolate you can add things to like coffee, mint leaves, marshmallows, chillies, etc. then this is the one for you.  I‘ve already had half the jar

It’s a lovely day to win no matter what the weather and before the week has ended we’ll be giving away this lovely gift of a pair of mugs and Galaxy Frothy Top Hot Chocolate. You may remember that I reviewed this fun hot chocolate a little earlier and found it to be not at all shabby but not as rich as those ones you zap (well, duh!). I kept this one for myself and did not share with the office – that tells a story all its own (mine…)

Now you have the chance to win not only come yummy hot chocolate but the perfect mugs to go with it! Not only are these mugs absolutely brilliant, they are perfect to hold without burning your fingers thanks to the two finger grips (yes, I know it is a heart but they are also finger grips!).

To win this lovely prize shipped directly to your door so you can enjoy the deliciousness of a hot chocolate from Galaxy, I just need to know…

What would your ultimate hot chocolate break be? In a chalet in front of a fire, with friends chatting on the weekend, after work… what would your ultimate hot chocolate break be? This is a luxurious hot chocolate so I’m sure it will inspire some luxurious ideas.

Leave your comment here or on this post on our Facebook page and we’ll select one winner of this fab prize.

Good luck everyone and here are those ever important rules – I want real people to win and not automated comp entry engines. Thanks to Loquax for providing help to those of us wanting to create fair ways to give stuff away.
1.One entry will be chosen at random from facebook and one entry will be chosen from blog comments that qualify.
2.The competition will run from Wednesday 14th of March 2012 to 1pm GMT Friday 14th March 2012.
3.The selection of winner will be made by the competition organiser using both entry lists and random.org alone and will not be swayed by undue influence.
4.One entry per person to this competition.
5.No cash alternative available.
6.I also reserve the right to exclude entries that I feel are inappropriate or not in the spirit of the competition.
7.Your details won’t be passed onto anyone else, unless you’re the winner and then I’ll send it to Galaxy so they can send you your prize.
8.I reserve the right to remove entries that I believe aren’t human created or are an attempt to gain an unfair advantage such as automated entries.

Well, ‘tis the season and all that and Galaxy have released a new drinking chocolate.  That’s right – a drinking chocolate. Not a hot chocolate with added milk powder but a rich drinking chocolate.

This drinking chocolate has actually been specifically designed to melt quickly, disperse evenly and give a better drinking chocolate experience without whisks and other paraphernalia. You just heat milk, add the drinking chocolate and voila.

Regrettably this still has added milk so it isn’t just a pure chocolate like other drinking chocolate I have reviewed but it is creamy and sweetly delicious.  I used the recommended measured and heated the milk and it mixed in smoothly.  It is typically chocolaty and sweet as you would expect from Galaxy.

I think that if you don’t feel comfortable with the fancy hot chocolates like the Fortnum & Masons that I reviewed then this is the perfect middle step.  It is a hot chocolate made with milk but isn’t complicated with melting chocolate before adding hot milk so it makes it easier to create and mixes in smoothly.

As part of Chocolate Week events, Fortnum & Mason contacted me about some stuff and I volunteered to review their hot chocolate as part of my week focusing on hot chocolates.  I thought that there was no better way to finish off hot chocolate week than with a post about one of the poshest but most delightful retailers around – Fortnum & Mason.

F & M is a well-established department store in one of London’s poshest neighbourhoods and its competition is Harrods in many ways but unlike Harrods they don’t have mass tourist appeal and seem to attract a slightly different mid to top end consumer.

Too many people think Harrod’s is the be all and end all of posh shops.  They see anything with the logo as confirmation that you too are part of an elite club of people who shop at the poshest of shops.  I was always led to believe that Fortnum & Mason was among those upper echelons of quality and taste and I think if you check their chocolate section, hosting of the Academy of Chocolate awards ceremony and support of Chocolate Week (among other things) I think those of us in the know, know Fortnum & Mason is the poshest of the posh.

The stores are beautifully laid out with ornamentation that seems to keep the store in a perpetual state of Victorian splendour. Opened in the 1700’s, they have held a number of royal warrants over the years.  Their first dates back over 150 years as they were appointed the grocers to HRH the Prince of Wales however importantly they got their confectionary royal warrant in 1867.  I wonder what hot chocolate was like then…

What I am doing, though, is getting to try what the hot chocolate from a Royal Warrant holder tastes like.  I wonder if this is what the Queen or Prince Phillip have when there is a chill in the palace?  I wonder if Will and Kate drank this in front of a fire après ski?  Whatever royalty has enjoyed this before, I, Judith Lewis, chocolate blogger and online marketing chick, am enjoying this now.

The instructions are difficult to follow because they (somewhat generically) tell you to create a paste from the chocolate flakes with hot milk.  Now, I don’t know what I was meant to do with the marshmallows but it was nigh on impossible to get the flakes out without marshmallows in a measured way.  Abandoning the instructions and just doing what I could, I zapped some milk, added the flakes and a few marshmallows, whisked then zapped again and finally gave it a good long whisk.

This is a nice hot chocolate.  I have to reluctantly admit I focused less on the hot chocolate (which was lovely – among the best I’ve had in the last 15 I’ve tried) and more on the gloriously deep slide into my childhood where I used to add extra marshmallows from the Carnation Hot Chocolate.  I hated the envelopes because sometimes you only got a scant few marshmallows.  As I got older, I learned to ration my marshmallows to ensure every cup got a good large portion and I did here too but LOOK at how many GLORIOUS marshmallows I got in the mug!

The hot chocolate is actually really nice but suffers from the gotta-have-a-whisk syndrome as making a paste is really hard (I eventually tried it). The flavour is nice and clean without the chemical flavour I find some have, and the marshmallows are HUGE for tiny marshmallows.  All in all this is the perfect hot choccy for a cold night and I hope Wills & Kate got to enjoy it at their lodge après ski.

I had the good fortune of meeting up with the dynamic duo that is ‘Jaz and Jul’s’ from Jaz and Jules Hot Chocolate.  Creating a specialist product in a niche market isn’t easy and they have attacked it with energy and a great positive attitude.  They gave me a sample of their lemongrass and lime to try of the stand and sent me away with a complimentary sample of their gingerbread hot chocolate to try.

Now, the last time I tried a “Gingerbread” hot chocolate was the Hotel Chocolat Christmas collection 2010 and it didn’t last.  The warming ginger with the lovely hot chocolate just hit the spot when I was cold through the winder though I know it was too much for some.

Jaz & Juls have created an interesting blend with a quality chocolate and blended that chocolate with spices to create their Gingerbread Hot Chocolate.  According to the instructions they have me, I missed half the packet with 200mL of milk and whisked.  Thank goodness for that whisk from Kokoa Collection!

The chocolate varies in consistency from the powder to chunks and it is lovely and rustic.  It’s so much ful to see powder then chocolate chunks tumble into the milk.  So much fum from one mug of hot choc!

The hot chocolate (warm milk and chocolate) was interesting. It was very gingery but the chocolate was also very storng.  The ginger wasn’t too spicy hot and so it made for an extremely drinkable hot chocolate.  The chunks completely melted and thanks to my Kokoa Collection whisk, they were beautifully mixed. A uniquely different approach to hot choc!

In the next instalment of the hot chocolate drinking week, I was sent three different Steenbergs drinking chocolates – this one, a Christmas one and a plain one.  I decided to save the last two to review a bit later but wanted to share how interesting this was with you all now.

Steenbergs list themselves on the tin as tea merchants.  They are a family-run, friendly firm committed to Fairtrade, the environment and people. It was set up in 2003 by Axel and Sophie Steenberg in North Yorkshire.  In fact, the can is very large and most suitable for tea.  The bag of hot chocolate in the tin is in a clear cellophane bag and the hot chocolate is powdered into a fine powder.  Now, you can imagine my delight at this as the one thing I find a challenge without a whisk is a smooth mix.

This hot chocolate is made with milk and so I created my concoction with care and precision (I zapped the milk in the microwave and mixed the powder in as per the instructions… sort of).  I found this to have a significant link that was calmed slightly by the milk so each sip I took was ‘kapow’ on the chilli and then a gradual softening of the heat.

This is a really interesting chilli hot chocolate but with the additional spices this is likely more of a spiced hot chocolate with a hot chilli kick.  Besides sugar and chocolate it has organic ginger , organic cinnamon powder , organic chilli powder, organic allspice powder and organic clove powder . Drinkable with an immediate heat.

Having started in an era when leaving the chocolates to dry on the roof was OK, Charbonnel et Walker grew into an establishment with a royal warrant.  Having several owners over the last generation, the shop has strayed little from its core values. In the last few years, Charbonnel et Walker have introduced some new flavours of late and so I decided to give their real hot chocolate flakes a try.

Everyone seems to recommend a different way of creating hot chocolate.  Here, I’ve got my real chocolate flakes and I’m adding hot water to them before whisking in milk.  Well, actually, given that an impromptu meeting happened while I was making it I stirred it with a spoon as I couldn’t access the whisk but still, had I been able to I would have.

There is a different flavour to this flaked hot chocolate to others I have tried so far. There is a slight flavour I always associate with coconut and makes me wish for some tiny marshmallows.  My favourite ones are the dehydrated ones you get in powdered hot chocolate – nummy!

All in all though, this hot chocolate is a nice drink.  The hot water before the hot milk is a good way to make it as it creates a paste before you add the warm milk, meaning the chocolate is easier to mix in to create a smooth drink.  I think though despite that I’d still give it a bit of a whisk.  Not as sweet as the HOD hot chocolate but sweeter than others, this is extremely drinkable and dangerous as a topping for cappuccinos, ice cream, pie, cakes, etc

I’m a hot chocolate fan and yet I find that unless you get real chocolate and mix it in with milk it just doesn’t work.  There is something about real chocolate in hot milk that just creates something special.  Devnaa took that and went one further by joining a chai tea latte with a proper real chocolate hot chocolate to create this winter warming delight.

As you can see, this packaging follows the lovely Devnaa style.  I’m a big fan of it and so really excellent hot chocolate is just the icing on the cake.  But bringing my fav chai tea latte which I used to have with my mom and grandma when she was alive just brought flooding back all those memories from that time when she was alive and well and we used to go shopping together.

So much love and emotion is tied up in that memory that anything chai these days has to be special and it really has to stand out for me.  It can’t just have a little spice – it has to have that precise balance of ginger, cloves, cardamom and cinnamon and milk and flavour to really get me going.

The scent of the real chocolate flakes, when you open the box, waft forth with hints of cloves and cinnamon but nothing really overwhelming.  There is the hint of something more but not really anything definite.  I wasn’t sure if this subtlety was because I did not shove my nose in the chocolate of because of a weakness in the spice flavouring so I was pensive… was this just going to disappoint or was it going to fulfil the promise on the packet of a chai masala flavoured hot chocolate?  My grandmother is no longer with us and so it is a high bar to reach.

As I heated the milk then whisked in the hot chocolate, I again smelled the familiar spices coming through.  Sitting down and taking a deep breath through my nose as I drank the hot chocolate was divine. I was instantly back to the Starbucks with my mom and grandma and we were sitting and chatting as we waited for our chai tea latte to cool.

For me, this was more than just a delicious hot chocolate with just the right amount of chai flavouring – for me this was a memory of family.  This was more than just a mug of hot chocolate to me – it was a hug from my grandma before I left to go back to the UK.  While it might just be a lovely, lightly spiced mug of hot chocolate in milk to you with the right balance of cardamom and cloves balanced in with cinnamon and ginger, it’ll always be something more to me.

Thanks Devnaa for bringing my grandma back to me, even for the briefest of moments.

You know that 3pm slump that sometimes happen, especially if all you’ve had for lunch is a “light” Caesar salad and 2 slices of cheese (don’t judge – I’m trying to diet).  Well, I find it happens to me a lot and when you’re avoiding too much sugar (but not chocolate) it’s difficult to find something to nibble in the office that isn’t crisps/chips or biscuits/cookies.  So it was with some excitement that I opened the GIANT box from House of Dorchester containing two types of their hot chocolate.

The flakes I took out first because, frankly, I knew I could eat them without having to actually *make* the hot chocolate.  Oh don’t get me wrong – I did still make the hot chocolate, but I also sampled the hot chocolate flakes.  I sampled them carefully, first taking three pinches and a further two half teaspoons.  You know that guilty pleasure you get when you do something you’re not supposed to?  Ya – that was totally me

So I took 200mL of milk, zapped it in the microwave and added four teaspoons of hot chocolate. I still stand by the whisk as ideal for hot chocolate but here used a spoon.  I think the 2min is too long for the 200mL of milk though as I had a bit boil over so maybe I’ll go to 1min45sec to heat the milk next time.  The melt was pretty much almost instant and it mixed in well even without a whisk.

The taste is pretty nice.  It is a hot chocolate made with s mix of dark and milk chocolate so you get a combination of the sweet and slightly darker.  In all likelihood these flakes will have a broad appeal and be under more than just a few trees this holiday season.  The tin is reusable, it is nice and brightly coloured and that makes it easy to find your hot chocolate in a cluttered cupboard.  The hot chocolate isn’t Kokoa Collection or Soma but it isn’t trying to be,  It is a delightfully appealing hot chocolate which is going to have mass appeal both as a snack (like the Sir Hans Sloane beads) and as a hot chocolate.  This is a safe choice for the holidays or for yourself.

There is a theme you’ve likely noticed.  Well, two for this post.  One these is that I’ve been reviewing a lot of hot chocolates lately. The other is that despite fearing for my very life (or at least a disapproving look) I continue to create these unsolicited reviews.  Since the owner doesn’t allow unsolicited reviews I can only imagine that they have a picture of me somewhere in a back room and are ready to refuse me entry should they catch me.  Given I was not alone on my latest foray into the heart of maybe and silver interior design that I am sure is stylish somewhere, I must have passed under the radar.

Reviews on Google of Moroco are not glowing.  I have no idea who the other people are but they have not been enjoying their visits.  Ones main complaint was the artificial colours in the macarons.  How can I contain my shock and horror.  No… really… can’t you see…. OK I’m being sarcastic but it does help back me up that despite the attempt at being posh, people want more than leather covered menus and weird interior design.  There has to be style *and* substance.  So with this in mind, and my latest dangerous mission in progress, I tried the hot chocolate.

The hot chocolate is no subtle affair.  As you can see, it comes with a number of elements: a cup, a chocolate, a pot of hot chocolate and a glass of whipped cream.  I tried the hot chocolate straight first.  It was thick, dull and lacklustre.  Having recently tried other hot chocolates I can say this was dull and lifeless.  Worse it left an oily coating on my lips.  Yuck.  I added whipped cream to it.  I got some on my nose and looked like a clown.  I mixed it in.  Still no improvement.

This was oily, sickly sweet hot chocolate which I am sure is appealing to a great many people.  That kind of sweet and yet thick hot chocolate seems popular and the rather posh service I’m sure appeals to many.  I think that given there is Soma hot chocolate in the same city, they could actually become something more than just a kind of funky style boutique and both support local industry *and* sell the best hot chocolate around by bringing in Soma as the hot chocolate they werved.  It would remain expensive but this time, there would be a top notch hot chocolate behind the price.

Moroco Chocolat have some good ideas in a great location but the quality is suffering.  If they would change out the lower quality Valrhona even for a higher quality they would immediately up the ante in the quality chocolate stakes by offering style *and* substance.