I love having a hot chocolate at any time of year I find it keeps me going mid afternoon when I'm starting to flag or in danger of nibbling. I usually buy Cadburys Hi Lites but recently I've been trying Options hot chocolate as the flavours do sound lovely. My latest jar is Options Indulgence Belgian Chocolate which I bought from Tesco for £3.19.

My Belgian chocolate indulgence is sold in a chocolate brown curvy plastic jar with a simple screw top lid. The front has a pale blue oval with Options Indulgence written in it in gold writing. The appearance of the jar is designed to be indulgent and luxurious and to a certain extent it does. The front of the jar tells the customer that this is "a flirtatiously rich Belgian chocolate for real chocolate lovers". It also gives the calories which are 60 per serving which is given as 16g of chocolate powder and 200mls of water.

The back of the jar gives all the usual details such as ingredients, nutritional information and directions for making up a mug of the hot chocolate.

On opening the jar there is foil covering the chocolate powder to keep it nice and fresh. Once you break through this and take a sniff the chocolate smell is strong and sweet. The powder is a light brown colour and has a slightly grainy feel. I had a little taste of the powder and it tastes like it smells, chocolaty and sweet.

To make a drink with the Options the instructions state that you need to add 4 heaped teaspoons to a mug of slightly cooled boiled water and stir. Now personally I find 4 heaped teaspoons is far too much, I personally only use 2, making the jar go twice as far, but of course this is down to personal taste. The jar also states that for a more creamier hot chocolate drink you could make it with milk instead of water, I have never done this because I think the drink is creamy enough without the milk but once again its down to personal taste.

I really like this particular Options flavour, the drink is quite a dark colour and tastes just like liquid chocolate, its sweet, rich, creamy and as the jar says indulgent! My only problem with Options, and this applies to all the flavours I've tried is that it is hard to get a totally lump free drink. I have found the best way to make this is to put the Options powder in a mug and add a small amount of cold water, stir really well and then add your boiling water. This removes most of the lumps and also takes the temperature down slightly.

Lumps aside though I would certainly recommend the Options Indulgence Belgian Chocolate, it makes a really chocolaty drink. It fills a gap mid afternoon and gives me the chocolate fix I like. I also use the Options powder for cooking, added to butter icing it makes a nice chocolate topping for cakes and buns and we sometimes have it sprinkled over ice cream.

If you like hot chocolate drinks that are rich and full of flavour then I would recommend trying this one, its certainly one of the nicer Options hot chocolate drinks I've tried.