Vegan easter egg made with almond milk. This new No Dairy chocolate range has launched this week just in time for Easter. It's not labelled 'dairy-free', but it is labelled vegan. Hotel Chocolat have eschewed rice powder and soya to replace the milk, in favour of almond powder, something we haven't seen before.
We picked up the 'scrambled' egg, decorated with scrambles of dark and white chocolate, and boxed with some fruit and nut squares. This is a substantial luxury egg and would make a nice gift.
The faux-milk chocolate market in the UK is becoming less niche. The traditional producers of Plamil, Moo Free and Celtic (Choices) have been joined at the artisan end by Ethicoco's oat milk chocolate, and now at the high street end by Hotel Chocolat.
So how does almond milk chocolate compare? Pretty well, but it's not a revolution. It's still a plain chocolate in many ways, just a milder and slightly creamier version. You can't taste the almond, which is good, but it's not sweet, mild and vanilla-ey like British milk chocolate. It's also still quite hard to the bite, like plain chocolate.
Having never tried Hotel Chocolat's cow-milk chocolate, it's hard to disagree that this is just as mild and creamy. Perhaps their milk chocolate is quite dark and cocoa-rich too?
The fruit and nut squares are absolutely delicious, but then so are the plain chocolate ones they sell!
The Good: No funny tastes, just mild chocolate
The Not-so-good: Could be softer, creamier and with more vanilla
Veganoo Score: ★★★★☆
Hotel Chocolat - 'Milk-Free Milk Chocolate' - Scrambled Egg
(the fruit and nut squares score full marks on their own)
Hotel Chocolat - 'Milk-Free Milk Chocolate' - Scrambled Egg
(the fruit and nut squares score full marks on their own)
Footnote: Ingredients
Here is the ingredients panel from the pack we reviewed.
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Thanks for posting this. Hotel Chocolat do have some nice chocolate, but it's quite expensive and they are terrible about listing ingredients, even if you contact them directly. No one in the company seems to understand that if you have an allergy you need to know all the ingredients, and this information is not available on their website. Now, I see that my sons could have their first ever taste of "milk" chocolate (they are allergic to ingredients in all the other versions we have come across).
ReplyDeleteJust to add that we are not vegans, but find this site helpful for finding new products as the boys have dairy and egg allergies among others. I have had their regular milk chocolate and it is very cocoa-rich and darker than say Dairy Milk. Very different product.
DeleteThanks Rebecca, particularly for the insight about Hotel Chocolat's dairy milk chocolate.
DeleteIt's interesting that as vegans we eat a lot of dark chocolate, so when we look for faux-milk chocolate, the last thing we want is cocoa-rich chocolate!... What we want is extra-creamy faux milk chocolate...
It's a problem for us because I find if the boys eat dark chocolate in the evening then bedtime is "eventful". So we could do with extra creamy, not so buzzy faux milk chocolate
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