Review: Cairnsmhor Wholegrain Mustard Crackers

Vegan oatcakes from Scottish producer Cairnsmhor. We needed something to eat vegan cheese on as we work through the Artisan Vegan Cheese book. These mustard flavoured oat crackers appeal to us for their practical shape... they're narrow enough to bite. Round and square crackers often break apart on first bite by contrast. These are practical...but also tasty.

Kosher Haul: Vegan Goodies from Vx

A selection from our recent trip to Vegan Cross from kosher producer Paskesz. Trios sandwich cookies, Mint Creme cookies and chocolate covered Nutty Chews. The Trios are clearly Oreo inspired and the Mint Creme cookies are almost exactly like Viscount biscuits in the UK. The Nutty Chews are harder to define.... sort of chewy peanut brittle with a chocolate coating:

Vegan Christmas: Manner Neapolitaner Wafers

Anyone for wafer jenga? Part of our haul from the local Polish deli is a large bag of Austrian hazelnut-cream wafers. We've reviewed Manner wafers before in their snack sized offering, but this large bag is party-sized for the Christmas season. You have to be careful only to choose the Neapolitaner flavour as the others contain milk, but luckily this is the best flavour anyway:

Weihnachten: Stollen, Lebkuchen, Spekulatius, Waffeln

Vegan Christmas, German style. We promised to find vegan stollen and lebkuchen and the local Polish deli came to our rescue. We thought we'd put together a selection of traditional German style christmas treats, but we couldn't find vegan domino cubes this year... not yet anyway. Lidl and Aldi have let us down as hardly anything is vegan in this year's Christmas selection, so we needed to look further afield. We've also got three sorts of chocolate marzipan and we'll be reviewing them all shortly.

Vegan Christmas: Speculoos Cookies from Lidl

Dutch Windmill Cookies as they're sometimes called, or Speculoos as we prefer. Lidl have avoided the German name Spekulatius and gone straight for the rather dull Spiced Biscuits. These are traditional caramelised cinammon biscuits enjoyed at Christmas in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. Lidl have plain and almond ones on offer and both are vegan this year (not every year). We picked up the almond speculoos:

New Vegan Biscuits: Maryland Snapjacks Review

Vegans can't eat Maryland Cookies, but we can indulge in their new stablemates... Maryland Snapjacks. It's a sad fact that the choc chips in Burton's Maryland Cookies are actually dairy-free, but the biscuits themselves contain whey powder. Not so with these new Snapjacks, which are crunchy dunking style biscuits, perfect to accompany a lovely brew (that's a cup of tea...for US readers...):

Gluten-Free Vegan Kids: Orgran Itsy Bitsy Bears

Aussie gluten-free specialists Orgran make a dozen or so products aimed at kids, from pasta to cookies to breakfast cereal. Their itsy bitsy bear biscuits have been on the market for a few years now, but they're not widely stocked in shops so unless you order online you may not have seen them. Like all Orgran products they are vegan and yeast-free, and like much of their range these are nut-free too. They do have lots of lovely stuff in there though, including 14% chocolate chips:

Gluten-Free Vegan: Prewetts Jammy Wheels

Gluten-Free recently 'beat the wheat' in our recent vegan ice cream cone taste test, so for this review we're doing it again...putting these gluten-free 'jammy wheels' up against wheat-based jammie dodgers. Both packs of biscuits (cookies for US readers) are vegan of course. The Prewetts biscuits are based on gluten-free oats and are slightly more 'wholemeal' looking than regular jammie dodgers. Can oats beat out wheat this time too?

Review: Dame Blanche Chocolate Cream Biscuits

We had high hopes for these cookies we spotted on Veganstore. They are large chocolate sandwich biscuits in the style of German doppelkeks, but they also look a bit like Wagon Wheels (Moon Pies for US readers). They aren't at all like Wagon Wheels in reality as they have a chocolate fondant rather than a marshmallow centre. Are these sandwich biscuits worth adding to your next Veganstore order though?

Banned by the Vegan Police. How Vegan is Vegan?

If the fabric on your restaurant chair is made of wool, is your meal still vegan? Undoubtedly. How about if the conveyor belt in a biscuit factory contains wool fibres, are the biscuits still vegan? We say yes, and here's why..

Gluten-Free Vegan: Biscotti Amaretti by Orgran

Orgran produce a massive range of gluten-free foods, all of which are vegan too. Their line of Biscotti Amaretti are the only vegan amaretto biscuits available in the UK as far as we can tell, so it's gluten-free or nothing for us vegans! They also happen to be yeast free, soy free and nut free. These biscotti are free-from pretty much everything, but are they free from flavour too?

Crumbs! New vegan biscuits: Fox's Munch

Bad news if you're dieting...Fox's new Munch biscuits are vegan friendly. These are great everyday biscuits, perfect for dunking in tea. They look a bit like ginger nuts but are softer and chewier...and not ginger. The oat and coconut biscuits have a slight coconut flavour but generally are just a buttery (plant butter...) crunchy, chewy biscuit. The 'Golden' flavour biscuits are the ones to go for, as the Chocolate Chip ones list dairy as an allergen despite no milk ingredients being included.