Versatility: ★★☆☆☆. This is a milk frother and hot chocolate maker all-in-one, but it has a very small capacity and it can't handle chocolate in any larger form than powder. Chocolate needed: I've tried powders, flakes, beads, and pieces of chocolate bar and they all melt smoothly. You'll need to break up large chunks of chocolate into easy-to-melt pieces but you can turn pretty much any chocolate bar into a hot chocolate! The Velvetiser is designed for making hot chocolate with Hotel Chocolat's drinking chocolate. There is a variety of flavours to choose from. Ease of use: 2/5 (The instructions are much too complicated to figure out, but once you have the hang of the machine, it is easy; too much unavoidable wastage) Value for money: Looking at the price point and quality of results, we evaluated whether the milk frother felt like a good investment.

If you’re a devotee of this most tastiest of drinks, you’ll be used to slaving over a hot stove, slowly heating milk and stirring in cocoa powder, watching it like a hawk so it doesn’t boil over, trying to find and remove any non-dissolved clumps… there’s none of that fuss or mess with the Velvetiser. You just plug it in, add your chocolate and your milk (dairy, plant-based or even water, if you prefer), and press the button. In two and a half minutes you’ll have a perfectly blended, silky-smooth hot chocolate, ready to pour into one of the Podcups, or your favourite, just-for-me mug. The jug, lid, whisk, and spoon are all dishwasher safe so clean-up is a doddle. Drinks take up to 4 minutes to make depending on the recipe, but bear in mind the gadget can only produce one cup at a time. Taste: ★★★★★. Deliciously divine is the best way to describe the taste! Rich, creamy, and frothy - even when hot water is used as the base liquid. Handheld milk frothers are designed to froth rather than whisk and beat, so they won’t make such a creamy hot chocolate. Automatic milk frothers also don’t tend to heat your drink – only mix it – so you’ll have to heat the milk first. To be honest, a velvetiser or hot chocolate machine is the only way to make the perfect hot chocolate (we’re talking, coffee shop standard) from the comfort of your own home.

Best hot chocolate makers at a glance:

Household Electricals Shop all Household Electricals Dry:Soon Heated Airers Heated Blankets & Mattress Protectors Irons & Clothes Steamers Air Purifiers The Velvetiser launches next month and the marketing spiel is eye-roll-inducing – the machine is billed as an “in-home drinking chocolate system” and its name becomes a verb, promising “velvetised drinks” and “perfect velvetising” – but that drink, though. It made me smile, it made me dance, it made me velvetise. Yes, it is an expensive, space-gobbling, single-cup, single-use gadget, but it is a very pretty one – available in eminently millennial colours (copper, matt charcoal, white). And while Hotel Chocolat is keen for you to use its single-serve pouches, I tried other hand-grated chocs, cacaoand even honey. Pourable silken pile, one and all. Overall: ★★☆☆☆. The red design might suit your kitchen, but the chief limitation that it can't handle flaked or cubed chocolate means this is limited solely to making cups of instant hot chocolate, one at a time. Pros: Like the Dualit (above), it can heat milk or can froth it; can froth cold milk; and it can make hot chocolate. Dreamed up by Hotel Chocolat, and engineered to the highest standards for them by Dualit®, the copper-coloured Velvetiser is an ultra-chic hot chocolate maker that creates barista-grade hot chocolate drinks at the press of a button. So if you’ve ever wished you could recreate the silky-smooth hot chocolate that you get in specialist cafés at home – or just love hot chocolate and want to enjoy the smoothest, creamiest cup without having to leave the house – The Velvetiser is here to make your chocolate dreams come true.

In fact, I didn’t get straight chocolate: I got Oreo. If you are going to use a machine that makes a hot drink with opaque plastic pods and a tankful of water, why not go full tilt? Also, this summer’s heatwave led to my five-year-old discovering Oreo ice-creams and, if I’m honest, they are not half bad. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the hot chocolate version. It was disgusting. For much of its history, chocolate has been consumed in liquid form as a drink, rather than eaten as a solid. Ground cocoa, sweetened with sugar and flavoured with aromatic spices, was mixed with water or milk to make drinking... The final important factor for me is cost, as I already own a saucepan and a microwave, so I need to justify the value of a new kitchen gadget. The Gourmet Gadgetry and Homgeek options are great value. At the other end of the spectrum are the gadgets by Hotel Chocolat, Nespresso, and KRUPS are the priciest options but also the best looking too. If you value style as much as function, these are the only options worth considering.When you drink is ready, pour left- or right-handed into your favourite mug and enjoy a barista-quality frothed hot chocolate.

The friction created by shaking the liquid and chocolate for around 10 seconds is enough to emulsify the hot chocolate into a creamy, frothy beverage - even when it's made with hot water! Taste: ★★★★☆. This gadget makes a nice, creamy textured hot chocolate. It might not be as hot as you'd like, though.Dualit Electric Milk Frother - has three settings to froth milk for smooth hot chocolate, as well as iced coffees, lattes and cappuccinos One-Touch Triple Function: heated milk, frothed hot milk, or cold froth in just two minutes, all at a press of a button Effortlessness: ★★☆☆☆. Making hot chocolate and cleaning-up afterwards just feels like hard work. It's a labour-intensive method, too.

Lynsey says: "Less than a third of the price of the Hotel Chocolat machine so I wasn't expecting much, but happy to report I was pleasantly surprised. This machine has four settings, is super quiet, easy to use and you just rinse it out like a jug afterwards. Versatility: ★★★★☆. Craft a wide range of coffees using this machine that can happily cope with ice cubes and chocolate slabs thrown at it.Overall: ★★★★☆. Every tech addict will want one of these devices in their kitchen. The Bluetooth-enabled hot chocolate machine is on the pricey side, but it has a bank of delicious-looking hot and cold coffee and chocolate recipes to work through. It’s officially hot chocolate season. And when it comes to creamy, indulgent hot chocolates at home, there’s one product that’s been making a serious splash online. We decided to put it to the test to see if it meets our Good Housekeeping Institute standards. Let’s take a closer look at the milky drink maker of the moment to find out if it’s really a kitchen must-have. What’s so special about the Hotel Chocolat Velvetiser?