Can you use a Hotel Chocolat Velvetiser with other brands of hot chocolate?

Recently I received a wonderful gift - a Hotel Chocolat Velvetiser. If you are unfamiliar, the Velvetiser is a small kitchen appliance for making delicious hot chocolate. The Velvetiser is basically a Hotel Chocolat branded electric milk frother, and Hotel Chocolat sell a wide range of flavoured hot chocolate sachets and larger pouches which you can use to make both hot and cold chocolate flavoured drinks. 

I absolutely love my new Velvetiser. I drink a lot of hot chocolate, and it saves all the effort of either heating up milk in a saucepan on the hob or trying to get the timings right for the microwave. It's amazing - a perfect mug of hot chocolate ready to drink in just a few minutes. The Velvetiser is also really easy to clean afterwards and it doesn't take much space to store. 

But when I received it, one of my first thoughts was, do I really need to use the Hotel Chocolat branded sachets?! They are expensive to buy, I have other favourite brands, and I often receive hot chocolate as a gift. 

So I thought I'd try out a few different hot chocolate variations, and share my results!

Other branded chocolate flakes

There are plenty of other brands of chocolate flakes available, and many of them are cheaper and come in larger packets. Each Hotel Chocolat sachet is around 30g, so you need about six level teaspoons of flaked chocolate. But you don't even need to use that much, even half that will still make a nice chocolaty drink. 

I did sometimes find that there was a little extra residue left behind when I used the off-brand flakes. I don't know why this would be, but it wasn't a problem it just needed a bit of extra cleaning.

Grated chocolate

I had a bar of chocolate which was specifically designed for hot chocolate, but I would have thought any chocolate bar would work. I used a normal cheese grater to grate it. One tip - for some reason I thought it would be easier to grate if the chocolate was cold from the fridge but that wasn't the case, room temperature chocolate was much easier. This worked just as well as the purchased chocolate flakes!

Chocolate spoon or ball

To make hot chocolate using a solid piece of chocolate like a chunky chocolate spoon or a chocolate ball then I found that it was best to use the Velvetiser to heat the milk first and add the chocolate afterwards. This worked well, the milk wasn't as hot as it would be if you used a saucepan so the chocolate did take a little longer to melt, but it worked in the end.

Other brand powdered hot chocolate

This also worked perfectly, and I tried a variety of different brands. Again I did find that there was a little bit of residue left behind, but this wasn't a problem. I also used Ovaltine powder which worked really well and mixed well with plain hot chocolate for a Maltesers type drink. I used some brands which are designed to just be used with hot water and making them up with the milk definitely improved the taste

Just milk

You can of course just use the Velvetiser to heat and froth the milk.

What else?

I've not finished experimenting yet! 

I'm thinking about grating different types and flavours of chocolate bar, like dark chocolate or orange. I'd also like to add in some extras like crushed Maltesers or Smarties. Using some flavoured syrups would also be fun to try. 

I've also discovered that Hotel Chocolat have a variety of different recipes on their website, including this amazing Velvetised Lava Cake which I definitely want to try!

Photo credit Jana Ohajdova via Unsplash