Rebrand: Freedom Mallows

The UK's favourite veggie marshmallows have had a facelift. The sloth is Freedom Mallows' new mascot, replacing the bunny rabbits from the old packaging. The massively improved branding should help make these mallows go mainstream, and yes - it finally says VEGAN on the front of the packs!

Review: Veggiestuff Vegan Sweets

Jelly sweets from Veggiestuff.com including sour rainbow twists, cola bottles and hard gums. The folks at Veggiestuff sent us a selection of their soft sweets for review. We've seen vegan cola bottles and hard gums before, but the rainbow twists are new. They may not have survived the mailing intact, but the taste wasn't affected...

Father's Day: Venchi Chocolate Truffle Cigar

VeganTown.co.uk have the perfect Father's Day gift: dairy-free gianduja cigars from Italian confectioner Venchi. The folks at VeganTown sent us a sample cigar to review (thank you folks!), while you can get yours for under a fiver. Father's Day this year is Sunday June 15th:

Review: Sweet Vegan's Vegan Nougat

UPDATE: Sweet Vegan are now trading as Marshmallow Deli

Traditional white nougat, without the egg-white. Call it fairground style, or french style, this is the chewy white block sort of nougat you get at the seaside (or in France). It's traditionally made with egg-white, or with gelatine, but Sweet Vegan use carrageenan, like they do in their marshmallows:

Review: Zero Zebra Safari Party Chocolate

Not strictly Christmas chocs, but ideal as a stocking filler. This pack of 10 dairy-free chocolate figures is available in the Christmas section at Holland & Barrett and also in independent health food stores. We reviewed Zero Zebra's chocolate bars earlier this year. This box is aimed more squarely at kids.

Vegan Christmas: Hazer Baba Turkish Delight

Why is it we only buy this stuff at Christmas? Maybe because it's only stocked at Christmas. This brand of Turkish Delight is currently on sale at Lakeland, as well as at discount supermarkets. Finding good Turkish Delight that's also vegan is difficult. Does this stuff make the grade?

Feature: Vegan Tuck Box

New and exciting vegan treats delivered to your door each month. If you're always on the lookout for new vegan products (like we are, of course), then you might be interested in The Vegan Tuckbox. This is a monthly delivery service of 10 new or hard to find vegan treats. The lovely vegan gals at Vegan Tuck Box sent us a free sample box (life's hard for vegan bloggers ain't it...). Read on to see what we made of it:

New: Freedom Mallows Strawberry Marshmallows

New vegan marshmallows with a strawberry flavour. Freedom Mallows are the machine-made light and fluffy vegetarian marshmallows from Manchester producers Freedom Confectionery. Previously only available in vanilla, the Strawberry flavour is arriving in UK shops round about now. We grabbed a bag to see if they're as good as the vanilla flavour.

Review: Freedom Mallows

Soft, fluffy, vegan marshmallows from @Freedommallows (Freedom Confectionery) of Manchester. We've been looking out for these and came across them in the strangest of places... the farm shop in the village of Thorverton, Devon (with lots of other vegan groceries too if you're near Exeter). You can have any flavour you like, as long as it's vanilla:

Review: Ananda's Round Up! 'Waggon Wheels'

Vegan Wagon Wheels or Vegan Moon Pies for US readers. Ananda's is an artisan confectionery producer based in Derbyshire. They mainly make marshmallows, which is probably why they chose to make Wagon Wheels, with their marshmallowy middle. How do they compare to the ones you may remember?

Review: Goody Good Stuff Jellies

Vegan jellies, sweet and sour. Goody Good Stuff are an independent UK company launched in 2010, specialising in vegetarian sweets. Most of their range is vegan, and according to their marketing team they're also Fat Free! Meat Free! Dairy Free! Alcohol Free! Gluten Free! Egg Free! Nut Free! Soy Free! Wheat Free! and Gelatine Free! Most importantly, they sent them to us Cost Free!...but we won't let that influence our review:

UPDATE: Vegan Status - The eight packs we reviewed are vegan (see the ingredients panels at the bottom of the page). Goody Good Stuff have clarified which products contain beeswax, and the situation is complicated. Don't mistake Koala Gummy Bears for Sour Koala Gummy Bears for instance! The Goody Good Stuff website isn't very clear, and the packs are not marked as vegan, so use the following list that the company provided this morning (2013-05-17).

Vegan Christmas: Lidl Chocolate Marzipan

Three types of plain chocolate marzipan in the Christmas range at Lidl. Whilst much of the Favorina brand confectionery isn't vegan this year, the good old staple of chocolate marzipan doesn't let us down. We were disappointed that the rum and raisin flavour was covered in milk chocolate, but we have pineapple and two sorts of plain marzipan to choose from.

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 Version: The Selection Box... Go Max Go

British tradition... meet American chocolate... it's the vegan version of the chocolate selection box! The festive favourite has gone dairy-free in time for Christmas. Of course, there's not actually a box in the above photo... you have to imagine that bit... but wrap these Go Max Go beauties up together for Christmas and the recipient will be one very happy vegan! Trust us.

Vegan Christmas: Kingsway Chocolate Liqueurs

Dark chocolate brand-name liqueurs bought from... Wilkinsons. Yes, following our recent trip to Poundland we extended our budget browsing to include Wilkos. To be fair to Wilkinsons they've gone upmarket recently, but this is no good thing for their vegan selection, which is now limited to one or two items like these chocolate liqueurs filled with Cointreau, St Remy and Teachers:

Vegan Christmas: Divine Fairtrade Chocolate

More vegan chocolate from Oxfam. Divine's Christmas range includes a few vegan options although they do decline to label them as such. Mint Thins and Ginger Thins are joined by Chocolate Christmas Trees as the dairy-free options. The mint and ginger thins clearly have an after-dinner role but we couldn't quite figure out where the chocolate trees fit in:

Vegan Christmas: Fairtrade Pralines at Oxfam

Organic, Vegan, Fairtrade and Handmade - pralines from the Christmas range at Oxfam. These could hardly be more removed from the Poundland confectionery we covered yesterday, but then the price is a little different too. Six quid for six. That's the same cost as our entire haul from Poundland. The vegan market is polarised like that...really cheap stuff (with no butter or other 'luxuries'), or really expensive stuff aimed at the discerning shopper. Are they worth the outlay?

Budget Vegan: Christmas at Poundland

Chocolates, Jellies and Wafers, all vegan, all one pound. Welcome to Christmas at the nation's favourite pound shop. Poundland isn't the first place you'd think to look for vegan confectionery at Christmas, but there are bargains to be had there. Our haul comprises three types of jellies, two sorts of choccies and a huge bag of wafers:

Review: Allsep's Party Mix Jelly Sweets

Australian confectionery brand Allsep's products are not widely available in the UK, but their vegan Party Mix jellies are. These are firm jellies, but not quite hard gums...think somewhere between jelly babies and wine gums. The sweets in each bag are in a whole range of shapes, colours and flavours...hence the 'party' moniker:

Bon-Bons, Jellies, Chocolate and Liquorice...from the National Trust

Probably not the first place to look for vegan confectionary, but the National Trust has a pretty good selection at some of their locations. Vegan toffee bon-bons are still as rare as hen's teeth so to find them sitting there in an NT gift shop is quite a surprise. Even vegetarian jellies are still unusual, and what about hard liquorice without gelatin or beeswax: