Supermarket Hot Chocolate

Best of the supermarket hot-chocolate brands

When most people (especially people with kids) think of hot chocolate, they think of relatively inexpensive supermarket brands sold in boxes of individual packets like Swiss Miss or Hershey's. Although many reviewers (especially those of a foodie bent) concentrate on more expensive imported hot chocolates, a surprising number of sources include supermarket brands in their taste tests. And of these supermarket brands, none are top-picked more often than Swiss Miss (*Est. $2 for 10 servings) .

The four top reviewers in our All Reviews chart -- Cook's Illustrated, Good Housekeeping, Real Simple and Consumer Reports -- all include Swiss Miss as one of their top picks, the only supermarket brand to earn this honor. (Hershey's and Land O' Lakes generate a couple of choices apiece, but none sweep the board like Swiss Miss.) Good Housekeeping calls Swiss Miss (which is meant to be prepared with water) a "bargain" and says it tastes "sweet but not too sweet," a judgment seconded by Real Simple. Even foodie sites have a soft spot for Swiss Miss: In its roundup, Serious Eats praises this brand's "sweet, smooth taste and rich texture," but says it can't compete flavor-wise with more expensive gourmet hot chocolate mixes.

Other supermarket brands aren't quite as cheap as Swiss Miss, but they still garner good reviews. Real Simple calls Land O' Lakes Cocoa Classics Supreme (*Est. $8 for 12 servings) "surprisingly creamy" and "smooth and milk-chocolaty," even though it's made with water rather than milk, while Cook's Illustrated references this brand's "creamy sweetness." Based on Land O' Lakes' higher price and lesser number of top picks, though, we've stuck with Swiss Miss as the ConsumerSearch Fast Answer for best supermarket brand.

Of the two names most associated with chocolate in the U.S. -- Hershey's and Nestlé -- only Hershey's approaches Swiss Miss for total number of top picks; however, these picks are split between standard Hershey's mixes and the decaffeinated Hershey's Goodnight Kisses (*Est. $2 for 4 servings) . Based on the groundswell of enthusiasm for this 99.9% caffeine-free mix, which is recommended by Cook's Illustrated, Cookie magazine and Boston.com, we decided to include Goodnight Kisses in ConsumerSearch Fast Answers as a good choice for adults or kids who like to sip hot cocoa before bedtime and want to avoid the naturally occurring caffeine in most other hot cocoa and hot chocolate mixes.

There is, however, one significant drawback to Hershey's Goodnight Kisses. For some inexplicable reason, this hot cocoa appears to only be available in an extremely small (and inconvenient) box of four servings. We hope Hershey's will soon reintroduce Goodnight Kisses in an economy-sized box with 25 or 50 servings, along the lines of Swiss Miss.