Avalanche Sugar-Free Premium Drinking Chocolate product reviews

I love hot chocolate so when the chance to review Avalanche Sugar-Free Premium Drinking Chocolate came up I was very keen to give it a try. Hot chocolate on a cold winters night is a great treat and if you can have it sugar free it's even better. Yummy treat with less guilt!

The drinking chocolate arrived after work on a cold Friday and I decided it was a perfect time to try it. As soon as I opened it I was greeted with that yummy dark chocolate smell. I decided since it was my first time of trying it I would follow the instructions. First taste and I discovered following the instructions made it far too strong for me as I just got the bitter dark chocolate taste. Not to be put off though I started again this time making it in my favourite way, with warm milk. I heated some milk and added have the recommend amount of powder and tried again. This time it was a lot more to my taste. It sill had a slightly bitter dark chocolate taste but I really enjoyed it and I will be having it again.

The following day after a busy afternoon I decided I needed a coffee hit. As mocha is one of my favourite coffees I decided to try it out with the sugar free drinking chocolate. I made my coffee as I normally would and mixed in a teaspoon of drinking chocolate. All I can say Yum! it made one of the best mochas ever it was nicer than when I make it with normal drinking chocolate.

I'm so glad I got to try the sugar free drinking chocolate it means one of my favourite treats can be a little more healthier.

Chocolate drinks are more my husbands thing, as I really only like Milo, but I was keen to give this one a try.

Opening up, it is only half full, which at first was a slight put off, but once I worked out how much powder made a nice drink I could see that it would end up lasting a bit longer than originally thought. The back suggests one heaped tablespoon per 200mls of heated milk. My first try was that much powder, as a warm drink, and I was ready to throw in the towel and not have any more, but I gave it another try, this time with only a level teaspoon worth of powder, that for me was perfect. It even works just as well as a cold drink, just be aware that it won't all dissolve that way.

I wanted to try something new and so giving google a go I ended up deciding to make chocolate pasta, substituting the cocoa powder with the Avalanche sugar-free drinking chocolate. I had to cut the pasta by hand, no fancy machine for that in our house, and popped it on to boil for a couple of minutes and made a syrup for it (using the sugar-free strawberry), my six year old didn't like it at all, my five year old ate half and my three year old and husband ate it all. My only change would be more chocolate!

Once I figured out my comfort zone, this was a nice drink, not too dissimilar to other brands, but being sugar free means that it isn't lacking in flavour.

I have to be sugar free as much as possible for health reasons and most the time it is rather hard as a lot of things have heaps of sugar that you don't realise is there, until you start reading the labels. I saw that KIWIreviews had some sugar free drinking chocolate to sample and I thought it would be perfect, try some and if I like it then just keep buying it.

I had a look at the directions and tried with 2 spoons, only to find it far too strong (I'm really fussy about my chocolate in cakes and drinks), I was ready to tip out and try some a bit later. I asked my daughter to make me some with only one spoon and it was much better. I have just made me another one with just one spoon and find it tastes a bit like dishwater. I could ask my daughter to always make it for me or I could just try and get it right myself or just give up and admit that I don't like this drinking chocolate at all.

I was going to try baking with it but since I don't like the taste in a drink then I'm not willing to waste ingredients just to find I hate it in the baking. I don't like a strong chocolate taste( hate dark chocolate but love white chocolate, can tolerate milk chocolate) and this is just proving to be a bit much of an obstacle for me to overcome.

Drinking chocolate is one of my pantry staples during the winter months - there is just something so comforting about curling up in front of the heater with a mug of chocolate deliciousness. One of the main things that I look at when choosing drinking chocolate is the sugar content so let's just say that I was super excited to try this product. Upon recieving it I was immediately drawn to the packaging - it is very clear and no nonsense. You can't miss the fact that the product is sugar free and it looks smart and sophisticated.

The first time I tried it I made it to the exact specifications on the tin (1 heaped tbsp and 200ml milk), however I found it to be way too dark and bitter for my tastes. The next time I tried it with 2tsp of drinking chocolate, 3/4 boiling water and topped up with cold milk. I liked it much better this way though I still found it to be quite bitter. My final try was to follow the directions on the tin but only use half the amount of drinking chocolate specified. It was perfect - smooth and creamy with just a hint of bitterness that is characteristic of dark chocolate.

As far as drinking chocolates go this product is a great alternative for those who need/want to control their sugar or calorie intake and those who aren't used to the excessive sweetness of other brands of drinking chocolate.

I go through stages of drinking lots of hot chocolate and then remind myself about how much sugar drinking chocolate has in it (Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate has 79% sugar and Milo has 46% sugar). That is usually enough to remind me to quit. It is exciting to see that there is an option available now that has no sugar in it.

The packaging looks classy with the black background and clear crisp fonts. The large lettering "Sugar Free" drew my attention to let us know that the drinking chocolate is sugar free. I had a look at the ingredients and they looks great, apart from the fact that I had no idea what Erythritol was. I did a quick Google search and found that is is a "sugar alcohol". It doesn't contain anywhere near the amount of calories as sugar (sugar is 4 calories per gram and Erythritol is 0.24 calories per gram - so pretty impressive). The other interesting things I found are that Erthyritol doesn't feed bacteria in your mouth to cause tooth decay and it doesn't spike your blood sugar levels. All very interesting reading. I found that there was also salt in the ingredients. That was a little unexpected to me but I looked at the other versions of hot chocolate that I had in the cupboard and found that they all had salt in them - interesting!

I can't drink milk and decided to try the hot chocolate with soy milk. Unfortunately, the taste of the soy milk wasn't masked enough and I drank it but didn't enjoy it that much. I guess the fact that I don't really like the flavour of soy milk didn't help much. My next trial was to make a smoothie with soy milk, banana and hot chocolate (about 1T of the powder). I quite like that and it was a huge improvement from the hot version. I tried it with my kids - the two year old loved it but the 4 year old wasn't sold on it at all. For me, I think the next thing I should try is to add the hot chocolate powder to rice milk as I think that the flavour isn't as overwhelming as soy milk and I think that my taste buds might treat it a bit more favourably.

My husband tried a hot chocolate made as per the instructions on the packaging, he found it rather benign. He drank it but wouldn't be keen to have it as a regular drink. He thought that it tasted artificial, with a flavour similar to the "Quik" that he used to drink as a child. It obviously wasn't a drink he enjoyed that much.

I should mention that our kids couldn't get enough of the hot chocolate with milk (hot or cold). They also loved mixing it with the Avalanche Kids Banana Bonanza. I think that these are perfect options for our children.

The best experiment I did was to add about one tablespoon of the powder with about 80ml of cream. I whipped it up and it tasted really nice. It turned out bit like a mild version of a chocolate moose. I cut up some banana, mandarin and tamarillo. The combination of tastes complemented each other perfectly. The whole family enjoyed it. It turned out to be quite a light dessert and something I will definitely do again.

We were lucky enough to be selected for this drinking chocolate recently through KIWIreviews. We got this one and a kids chocolate one as well. This one was my treat one, and so the kids did not get a look in. I've been using it all week in all sorts of things, and am finding it very enjoyable.

The first thing I did with this was take two spoonfuls and add this to cold milk. I stirred it til the powder combined and found that the milk went a very rich chocolatey colour. The flavour was a good level of chocolate, more bitter than sweet. At the bottom of my glass, I had a little of the crystallised sugar substitute. This was pleasant tasting though, and nothing like some of the other diet sweeteners that I try and avoid.

I have used this in my coffee, to give me a mocha taste. I have used it with some different liquers as well, when I feel like a laced hot chocolate. My favourite was with a creamy limoncello. Chocolatey lemon and creamy and warm, just delicious. Lastly I used it as a cocoa substitute last night in a microwave self saucing pudding I do. The pudding came out much richer than usual, and my husband absolutely raved about the taste which was definitely down to the drinking chocolate.

As for the packaging, the canister is so cute. The lid is easy to get on and off. The design elements give it a real "just for adults" feel. It just looks a little naughty. Inside the powder is soft and easy to spoon. It also looks a bit glam with the simmer of the sweetener crystals in it.