Dairy Free Hot Chocolate: Fail

The sad truth of the food allergic world is that: ‘All which is gold does not glitter.’ No doubt, things are getting better. There is an increasing amount of competition in the Free-From food market which is pushing producers to make Substitute and Allergy Free foods to higher and higher standards. We the Free From & Food Allergic population won’t just eat anything anymore! ... But the hard part is in the, not always tasty and exciting ordeal of trying all the different products on the market to weed the good and the amazing from the mediocre and the tragic.

That is why you should follow Dublin with Food Allergies ;)
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I will do the trying for you and tell you all about it so you can save your hard earned cash and protect your well-loved taste buds from the untouchables. Likewise, that is why you should share your ups and downs and mediocre to amazing free-from experiences with the rest of us because ‘group saving’ is ‘good saving’! ;)

Anyway, the whole point of today’s post is to tell you about a less than amazing Dairy Free hot chocolate experience. One day, quite some time ago, My lovely friend S. gave me a very tasty looking jar of Ballyshiel Speciality Vanilla Hot Chocolate single cup drinking chocolate drops to be enjoyed during one of our many DVD nights which started out as a tribute to musicals but has since moved into a Period Drama 101 course. The hot chocolate (new to all of us) looked fabulously lux and just so happened to be Dairy Free but I just so happened to be out of Dairy Free milk ... so ... after a few dvd nights I finally got my act together and re-gifted the hot chocolate drops back to S. with an accompanying carton of Dairy Free Provamel Soya milk. I was quite excited to try this Dairy Free Hot Chocolate out and extra excited because S. her husband T. and our Musical and Period Drama partner in crime G. were all going to have their hot chocolate a la Dairy Free with me, despite their cow milk drinking lifestyles of choice.

Ohhhh, the woes of the food allergic. Is there ANYthing worse then sharing allergy free food (especially sweets) with non allergics only to the horror of it tasting rubbish?

To the defence of Ballyshiel hot chocolate drops, the instructions did suggest cow’s milk and advised that it be 50% milk and 50% water for the melting, but seriously can 100% soya milk have made THAT much of a difference? S. and I got carried away in the kitchen and even put in almost double the suggested chocolate drops and still....

We all quietly sipped our hot -supposed to be- chocolate until finally T. broke the silence by announcing that really it just tasted like hot Soya milk and we had to admit that it was true. Where was the chocolate? Where was the sweetness? G. finished his because warm soya milk isn’t so bad but What. A. Let Down ... and after such a long wait!

The moral of this story: if Ballyshiel hot chocolate drops are loved by many (which I doubt), they are definitely not suitable for dairy free substitutions ... or maybe that 50% water just really rocks the chocolatey goodness, I will never know because I will never try them again. That’s right, it was THAT disappointing.

C’est la vie