Review: D and D Chocolate Chips

A big bag of dairy-free chocolate chips for baking. D and D Chocolates produce a range of dairy-free carob and chocolate goodies, including fondants, bars and seasonal chocolates. The Siesta brand is part of D and D. This 350g bag of chocolate chips is dairy-free, gluten-free and nut-free and is made with a mild 55% dark chocolate which even kids will enjoy.

Review: VBites VegiDeli Chicken Style Pieces

There's no coincidence that we reviewed these on Christmas Eve last year. Even if you're not into faux meat for the rest of the year, Christmas seems to be the season for tucking into tofurkey and vegan chipolatas. If you miss turkey and chicken since turning vegan, there are a few good options for your fowl-mouthed cravings, like these Vbites Chicken Style pieces:

Vegan Christmas: Coop Liqueurs and Mint Thins

Vegan 'after-eights' and chocolate liqueurs from the Cooperative. The Coop couldn't decide if these were vegan, so we've decided for them (see below).

Vegan Christmas: VBites Cheatin' Turkey Style Roast

Meat-free festive roast. Have you got used to saying VBites instead of Redwood Yet? The Cheatin branding lives on at least on the company's faux meat range. Outside London, you'll find it hard to get hold of exotic (and expensive) US products like Tofurky or Field Roast, so we thought we'd review a long established offering from these shores. Is this Turkey Style Roast something you could look forward to for your vegan Christmas dinner?

Review: Taifun Tofu-Wieners

Smoked vegan hot dog sausages made from tofu. We're working our way through all the brands of vegan hot dog sausages available in the UK. Taifun's Wieners are one of the longest on the scene, pre-dating Frys, Viana, Vegusto, Plantbasedfoods and maybe even Redwood (VBites). Taifun's smoked tofu won our tofu Taste Test, but does 76% tofu make a good wiener?

Vegan Christmas: Choices Chocolate's Santa Sack

Vegan 'selection box' of dairy-free chocolates... without the box. Last year we bemoaned the lack of vegan selection boxes, so we put our own together from Go Max Go bars. This year, Choices (Celtic Chocolates) have stepped up to the plate with a festive Santa Sack of goodies. You get 180g of choccies from their faux-milk chocolate range:

Vegan Christmas: Lazy Day Iced Fruit Cake

Individual slices of vegan Christmas cake, with or without icing. This gluten-free cake is perfect for Christmas although it's available all year round. If you don't want to spend a fortune on a large vegan Christmas cake, or bake and ice your own, this might be perfect. It will also give you something gluten-free to give unexpected guests with allergies.

Review: Oloves snack olives

50 Calorie snack packs of marinated olives. Flavours include Basil & Garlic, Lemon & Rosemary, Chilli & garlic and Chilli and Oregano. The packs we were sent are in flavours that have just been tweaked however, along with the packaging (see below):

Review: Plantbasedfoods Soya Frankfurters

More sausages, this time soya hot dog sausages, from Ireland based Plantbasedfoods. After reviewing their Veggie Sausages we found these hot dog franks and thought we'd give them a try too. Traditional Frankfurters and Wieners are pretty much the same thing (they may differ in proportions of which dead flesh they use, depending where you are in the world). For vegans, if they're intended for hot dogs, they're the same thing:

Review: Wowbutter 'peanut' butter

Peanut-free spread that tastes just like peanut butter. Soya beans are the legume that replaces the peanuts in this alternative to peanut butter. If you're allergic to peanuts this could be a useful replacement. This stuff comes in creamy (smooth) as well as crunchy. We picked up the creamy option and it looks really convincing within the jar:

Review: Riverbank Bakery Fruit Cake

Norfolk Mixed Fruit Cake from the egg-free selection of Riverbank Bakery in Kings Lynn. There are a growing number of vegan bakeries online, but it's still rare to see vegan cakes stocked in shops. We were surprised to learn that the entire cake range of Riverbank Bakery is egg-free (we're checking to see if the whole range is vegan). This one is reassuringly labelled vegan on the pack:

Review: Kernow Chocolate

Cornish dark chocolate in Chilli & Lime, Coffee, and Raspberry flavours amongst others. The range is handmade in Cornwall and available at National Trust gift shops and other tourist destinations. We picked up three of the more exciting sounding bars for our review:

Review: Welbourne's Special Plum Bread

Award-Winning Lincolnshire Plum Loaf from Welbourne's Bakery. Apparently this has been made to the same recipe since 1896... except for changing the lard to vegetable fat for vegans and vegetarians. In honour of the recipe change we thought we'd review the plum bread to see what makes it so special:

Guest Review: Erin B does PERK!ER Porridge

Gingerbread & Raisin porridge. 'Gloriously Gluten Free' is the promise that Perk!er make on their packs of muesli and porridge. We asked guest reviewer Erin B of Guilt Free Veggie to give us her thoughts on the porridge:

Review: Jeezo Bianco - Vegan Mozzarella

Vegourmet's rebranded and repackaged block cheese is now called Jeezo, while their cheese slices are called Jeezini. We've took this opportunity to revisit Jeezo, because we've reviewed it previously as part of our Meltdown and Cheeseboard taste tests and we were pretty harsh on it. Read on for why we might have softened our view:

Review: Mediterranea range of mock meats

Italian Sausages, Burgers and Seitan Slices from MozzaRisella partner Mediterranea. To promote the launch of the MozzaRisella online shop, the company sent us a range of their deli mock meats. Alongside their fantastic vegan mozzarella, and excellent ravioli, you can also now buy these italian tofu and seitan specialities:

Review: Wicken Fen Carrot & Coriander Sausages

Gluten-Free vegan sausages made with soya...and 11% carrots. The Wicken Fen brand has been around in the UK for over 20 years, but seems to come and go depending on the weather. Currently stocked in Sainsburys as well as health food shops, the range includes falafel and various types of veggie sausage (not all vegan). The carrot and coriander ones are some of the very few vegan and gluten-free sausages you can buy:

Review: Booja Booja Dairy-Free Ice Cream

Mini-tubs of premium vegan ice cream that come with spoons, in Vanilla, Coconut and Chocolate flavours. Continuing our 'frozen' theme of late, which we should have done in August rather than as autumn arrives... These mini pots of ice cream have been around for a couple of years, but we're revisiting them to compare them to recent arrivals on the vegan ice cream scene:

Review: Everfresh Bakery Fig & Orange Cake

Long-life organic fruit cake. Buying vegan cake off the shelf is still difficult...you can't do it in most supermarkets for instance. When cakes are vegan, they're often gluten-free too, which doesn't appeal to everybody. This range of cakes from Everfresh Natural Foods has gluten-free options, but most of the range is wheatflour based:

Review: Koko Milkshakes

Coconut milk dairy-free milkshakes in multipacks from Koko (formerly Kara). We love Koko coconut milk, and we've also sampled the chocolate version at various vegan festivals, so we were pleased to see these multipacks appear. Available in Strawberry and Chocolate flavours, oddly in different shaped packs. They're long-life and come with straws, but also have a tear-off corner if you have a glass handy: