Mexican Hot Chocolate Granola Giveaway!

If you guys guessed Mexican Hot Chocolate Granola in my last post, you were right! I received a package with a big “Nuts About Granola” sticker on it yesterday, and despite my sugar hangover I couldn’t tear open the box quick enough!

To bring any new readers up to date, a few months ago I entered Nuts About Granola’s “Next Best Thing” contest. They asked people to suggest a new granola flavor based on a type of cuisine. My Mexican Hot Chocolate flavor was chosen as one of three finalists, and then thanks to tons of votes from fantastic readers and friends it WON!

Nuts About Granola is a company started by a mother/daughter team, Gayle and Sarah, and is based in York, PA. They believe in using only natural, organic ingredients in their products. There are no artificial chemicals, dyes or preservatives and everything is sourced locally.

Sarah began selling their granola as a fundraiser for her college’s Triathlon team, and eventually in 2008 Nuts About Granola, LLC was born. The “Plain Jane” peanut butter granola was the original favorite, but now they feature the “College Staple” that tastes like a PB&J, the “Lovers Combo” that mixes peanut butter and chocolate, and a few specialty flavors like “Orange Creamsicle”. You can even get Gluten Free granola!

The product is sold mostly in small PA farmers markets and online, but they are hoping to expand so long as they can maintain their healthy, local, and small-batch business model. They’ve been chosen for the Emmy Awards gift bag and were a Rachael Ray Show snack of the day!

I decided to try my creation straight up – just dumped it into the palm of my hand and ate away. I was curious as to how the company would balance the sweet and savory flavor combination of Mexican Hot Chocolate and was happy to see they included both cinnamon and cayenne pepper on the ingredient list. You can also see that there are little dark chocolate chips sprinkled throughout the clusters.

I LOVED IT. It is unlike any granola I’ve ever tried! The dark chocolate is rich and not too sweet just like it should be, and there is a definite spicy kick at the end. It doesn’t taste like it will put you into a sugar coma (which was much appreciated since I was pretty much already in one at the time) and would be perfect atop of some plain or lightly sweetened yogurt. Seriously this is a totally new arena for granola with the sweet and spicy side by side. I’m so excited about it!!

SO, want to try some Mexican Hot Chocolate Granola for yourself?

TWO lucky winners will receive a bag of granola. You don’t have to have a blog to win, but I’m going to have to limit this to U.S. readers only due to shipping costs. There are three ways to enter and please leave a separate comment for each entry. I’ll pick the winner by random number generator on Wednesday May 18th.

• Go to the Nuts About Granola website and tell me which granola flavor sounds the best to you
• Tweet about this contest “@fittingitallin is having a Mexican Hot Chocolate granola giveaway!” and include a link to this post
• Write about this contest on your own blog

GOOD LUCK! And if you don’t win, you can always go to the website and purchase your own bag for just $5.99:)