Whittards rocky road hot chocolate

Yes we are in the middle of a heat wave here in the UK, but I am a girl that likes to feel cosy and sometimes all I want in the evening to relax me before bed is a nice hot drink. On a trip to London (prior to the heatwave) my husband and I visited the Whittard’s store in Covent Garden to sample their free teas and needless to say the chocolate absolutely won us over.

For those not familiar, Whittard Chelsea is a very posh brand, at least here in the UK. They specialise in tea, and when we visited they had at least twenty different types of teas on sale and for you to sample. If you are ever in Covent Garden, the store is absolutely worth a visit just to try the very delicious teas they have. They had a wide variety of summery fruit teas, both hot and cold options, and all of them were delicious. But they also had some of their hot chocolate available and – I do not mean this to sound dramatic – these were truly life changing.

We decided to buy their sample collection, which gave us 6 different flavours to try, 4 of which were all vegan friendly. One of them was this rocky road hot chocolate and I think this may be favourite of all of them. For starters, the hot chocolate is insanely creamy, and I don’t even use milk to make my hot chocolates. I just added hot water to the chocolate powder and it still tasted like it had been made with milk. I will definitely need to try making this with milk (I am thinking almond milk may work best with this one given the flavour) when the weather starts to get a bit colder, but I was very much impressed by the silky smooth creaminess of the hot chocolate with just hot water. I am so used to the supermarket offerings having this oddly grainy texture, to the point where I thought this was just normal and happened with all vegan versions and I just needed to come to terms with that. But this has proved me completely wrong and that this stuff really is just…elite.

The flavour though is a bit like witchcraft. If you have ever tried rocky road, this hot chocolate tastes like a melted down rocky road bar. As I say, the chocolate aspect is very creamy and decadent, and the flavour gave this wonderful aftertaste of marshmallows. It is slightly sweeter than a regular hot chocolate, most likely due to the marshmallow flavouring, but it is not sickly or overpowering. I had been expecting this to be quite overpowering but it is the perfect balance of being strong enough so you can instantly recognise what the flavour is, but isn’t so strong that it becomes very sickly by the end of the drink. The cherry also gives it a very subtle tartness with each sip, but again it doesn’t linger and is perfectly offset by the marshmallow. I would say I didn’t get much flavour of biscuit, but it did smell like a cookie which was quite a nice pre-sip addition – as I say, imagine melting down a piece of rocky road and that is exactly what this hot chocolate was.

I am a bit ashamed to say that I can no longer drink normal hot chocolate. Having tasted the higher quality product, I don’t see how I can go back to the standard stuff from the supermarkets. Now I did get this as part of a sample box for £30, but I have to say that it is actually very good value for money. You get 6 flavours (4 of which were vegan, the other two my husband was more than happy to have to himself) and the tubs are surprisingly full. I think I got about 6 servings out of this, but that was with me being rather generous with my teaspoon sizes, and also with a very small portion left over at the very end. I think if you were to truly measure it out, you could get at least 8-10 cups out of one of these tubs, which seems insane value for money when you work out that one tub was £5. As I say, this was my favourite flavour out of them, but at the same time every flavour included was delicious. This tub also lasted me about 2 months, although I will aim to update this when I rebuy this for the winter months. Because I don’t know how I will cope in the cold English winters without this luxury.

Overall: 10/10. I didn’t even technically make it as is recommended and it is still the most luxurious hot chocolate I have ever had.

T xxx