You'd never guess Valor chocolates have no sugar in them

Can you taste the difference between a dark chocolate and a sugar-free dark chocolate of the same cacao percentage? You can't, as a group of foodies, including myself, discovered recently when we came together in Cape Town for the launch of a Spanish brand of chocolate into the local market. The two tasted exactly the same and it became a guessing game, such was the quality of the range of sugar-free chocolates.

Valor Chocolates, a family bean-to-bar business founded in 1881, has a rich and long pedigree of producing quality chocolates. Their sugar-free range was many years in the making. It is made in the same way as their chocolates with one exception: the sugar-free range uses the natural sweetener stevia instead of cane sugar.

I so enjoyed the hazelnut praline bar, a milk chocolate. Hard to believe it was sugar-free with the delicious creamy centre. The mint, a dark slab with a minty finish, is a good after-dinner sweetener. The dark orange was my favourite. I loved the nibs of orange rind, which offset the sweetness perfectly without the extra calories.

Verdict? For those who love chocolate but choose not to consume or can't eat sugar-laden products, these offer the pleasure of the real thing without having to compromise on quality.

Valor Chocolates can be found in selected DisChem, Checkers and Spar stores.