Best Hot Cocoa Taste Test
Looking for the best hot cocoa packet at the grocery store? We did a taste test and here is our winner.
Do your kids love hot cocoa in the winter? How do you prefer to make it: from scratch or with the instant packets you get from the store?
Our family enjoys it both ways. My crockpot hot cocoa is a staple for Christmas Eve but for the rest of winter we tend to stick to the instant packets made with water.
We decided to host a Best Hot Cocoa Packets blind taste test challenge here at home so we could vote as a group which one was worthy of keeping stocked in our kitchen this winter.
This was such a fun experiment, you could do it as a family Christmas Eve activity!
Hot Cocoa Taste Test Challenge
For our taste test challenge, we wanted to find the BEST brand of hot chocolate for everyday use during winter.
I wanted the hot cocoa packets to be easy to restock so I checked my normal shopping spots: Target, our local grocery store, and Amazon.
Each hot cocoa packet had to meet these requirements:
- Cocoa made with JUST water:ย Our Peanut suffers a bit from lactose intolerance, so I wanted something I could make with water to reduce her milk consumption.ย
- Must be a Classic hot cocoa flavor: Most brands offer a "diet" version or multiple flavor varieties, I wanted just a simple chocolate flavor without added marshmallows. (I bent the rule and added one single mint flavor in the mix because we really wanted to try that one.)
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The Hot Cocoa Contenders
The hot chocolate brands that met my requirements and made it to our final taste test included:
- Ghirardelli Hot Cocoa with chocolate chips: You can buy it here.
- Land O' Lakes Chocolate Supreme: You can buy it here.
- Land O' Lakes Hot Cocoa Mint:You can buy it here.
- Swiss Miss Milk Chocolate: You can buy it here.
- Nestle Rich Milk Chocolate:You can buy it here.
Tools You Need
Years ago, we purchased an electric water kettle to keep on hand for making hot cocoa. It is so easy to use, my girls can do it themselves. It just lives on our kitchen counter all winter long.
The water kettle makes this fun hot cocoa taste test extra easy. In addition, you will want to have:
- Paper Cups: We used simple red paper cups like these.
- A Sharpie: For marking the bottoms of the cups.
- Spoons for Stirring
Printable Score Sheet
If you'd like to host your own hot cocoa competition in your kitchen, I have an adorable printable score sheet included in my Hot Cocoa Tasting Party Kit.
The kit is available in my online shop but if you subscribe to my newsletter, I'll send you a discount code for half off!
How to Play
I printed a copy of my score sheet for each of my girls and left plenty of room for them to write some simple notes if they wanted to doodle or mark it up as we played along.
I marked the bottoms of 5 cute red and white paper cups for each girl. I had them leave the room while I poured one packet from each brand into one of the 5 cups.
I marked the packet with the number of the cup so I wouldn't forget which was which.
When the girls came back into the room, I had them look at the dried powder in the cup to try and guess which one might end up being the tastiest.
Then I poured exactly 6 oz of hot water into each cup and stirred up the hot cocoa.
We divided one prepared packet of each brand into 3 mugs so we could share the hot cocoa (and reduce how much of it my kids drank!)
BEST Hot Cocoa Packets Made with Water
So, which one won in our taste test?
I was surprised by the answer myself but the jury was split. . .
Little Pea and I were in complete agreement: Land O' Lakes won by a LANDSLIDE.
It was by far the richest, creamiest, most delicious cup of hot cocoa out of the bunch. I preferred the mint to the classic chocolate, but she loved the plain the best. We will absolutely be stocking our kitchen with this product all winter long.
I actually got suckered into buying this Land O' Lakes 11-flavor variety pack on Amazon and I can't wait to taste test some of the other packets. Hazelnut and Amaretto have got my name all over them, but the girls are fighting over who gets the Caramel and Butterscotch.
The Peanut declared Nestle to be her favorite. She liked that it was even sweeter than Land O' Lakes and a little less creamy. She described it as "Perfect for adding marshmallows!"
But just because those were our favorites, doesn't mean your family will agree. You should totally do this fun taste test for yourselves before you buy the BIG bulk boxes of your favorite flavor.
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