Book Review: World Food Café: Quick & Easy

Recipes by Chris and Carolyn Caldicott.
Guest Review by Erin B from Guilt Free Veggie.

This book is not exclusively vegan, so when we were offered the chance to review it, we asked vegetarian blogger Erin from Guilt Free Veggie to review it on our behalf. The beautiful looking hard backed book was released at the beginning of this month and features over 100 vegetarian and vegan recipes from across the globe, with stunning travel and food photography throughout:

Review: Mamma Cucina Dairy-Free Pizza

Vegan margherita pizza with Tofutti mozzarella cheese. Part of Triano Brands (best known for Tofutti), the Mamma Cucina range in the UK now includes dairy-free ice cream, cheesecakes, quiches and pizzas. Just like the quiche and cheesecake, this pizza is also gluten-free. We've tried Tofutti cheese on pizza before...so does this make a worthwhile frozen pizza?

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: Food Heaven Dairy-Free Ice Cream

Vegan ice cream from @FoodHeaven in Rich Chocolate, Cool Vanilla and Wild Blueberry flavours. Jodi Anderson and the team at Food Heaven have put together a great range of dairy-free foods, with this dairy-free ice cream now widely available. You may be familiar with Food Heaven's frozen cheesecakes, and they're soon to launch a dairy-free tiramisu too! We checked out the ice cream on a sunny September weekend...

Next Month: VegFest London 2013

It's September 5th already, just one month until the massive vegan extravaganza of VegFest London on October 5th and 6th. The two day event is on at Kensington Olympia and features headline comedy from Dave Spikey and Lucy Porter, music from Macka B, guests like Melissa Morgan and Scott Jurek, plus scores and scores of stalls. There'll be loads of vegan food on offer, live cookery demos, talks, presentations, workshops and entertainment. It's the vegan event of the year, and we'll be there:

[P]review: Buono Ice Cream Mochi



That's right, preview rather than review. We haven't verified that these are even vegetarian yet, but we're pretty sure they are. They're labelled Dairy-Free, but not as vegetarian, and a couple of the ingredients could be from animal fat. Buono make other products with the same ingredients that are labelled as vegetarian, so we're pretty sure this is an oversight. We've reached out to the distributor to establish the facts, and await their reply.

We hope they're kosher, because they're rather good:

UPDATE: These are confirmed as vegetarian, as well as dairy-free (and have no other possible animal ingredients listed) and they therefore meet our review criteria as being vegan.

Review: Granovita Soyesse Desserts

Yoghurt-style desserts from @GranoVitaUK which replace their Soyage line. The desserts come in six flavours: Plain, Strawberry, Raspberry, Banana, Black Cherry and Peach & Apricot. GranoVita sent us a couple of pots of the Peach and Apricot flavour for our review:

News: Frys frozen range now in Ocado

Your favourite vegan frozen food brand Fry’s Vegetarian is now available through online retailer Ocado. Following a bumper year of sales in the UK, Fry’s has succeeded in getting all 17 of their totally vegan range of products onto the shelves at Ocado. This is great news for vegans who now have a national supplier offering vegan frozen food at the click of a mouse.

Review: Vegusto Farmhouse Sausages

Big fat vegan sausages from @vegusto_uk in a 'Farmhouse' or 'Cervelat' style (if you're Swiss). Two in a pack, and as usual from Vegusto, ABSOLUTELY NO INSTRUCTIONS on how to prepare them... There's no point googling how to prepare the dead pig/cow version of Cervelat either, so you're on your own. We boiled ours, and they may be the best sausages we've ever eaten:

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:

New: Good Karma "3omega6" Flax Milk

Terrible name. Great product. Good Karma introduced their dairy-free flax milk to the UK earlier this year under the name "3omega6", which is a name so bad they didn't even put it on the carton. Having also missed off their company name "Good Karma" we think they should fire their creative department. Just as well the product speaks for itself:

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: Violife Flavoured Cheeses

Vegan cheese with Olives, Peppers, Herbs or Tomato & Basil. Greek cheese masters Viotros were the first to get a 5 star review for a vegan cheese here on Veganoo. Since the original cheese slices launched earlier this year, the range has expanded rapidly. We picked out four of the new flavoured cheeses for our review:

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:

Review: Ananda's Marshmallows

Melting vegan marshmallows in a wide range of flavours. We recently reviewed Ananda's vegan Waggon Wheels and promised a follow up with a review of their marshmallows. We picked up three flavours from Ananda's online shop - Strawberry Dream, Choca Mocha, and Lemon Crunch:

Review: Vegemite

In honour of Nottingham being full of Australians for the Ashes Test last week, we thought we'd review Vegemite. There aren't many Aussie vegan things we could think of besides Vegemite (any thoughts?). You'll either love or hate Marmite, but have you even tried Vegemite?

Review: Provamel Pouring Yoghurts

New from Provamel - breakfast pouring yoghurts in Natural and Vanilla. We've been searching high and low for these as they don't seem to be widely stocked as yet. These pouring yoghurts are unusual, as there isn't a great pouring yoghurt tradition in the UK. We have nothing to compare them to, but Provamel have their own high standards, so our expectations were high:

Bragging Rights: We're in The Vegg Cookbook!

Our Baked Frittata recipe made it to publication and as a contributor we've received a copy of the cookbook to review. If you've got a copy (rare in the UK!), we're on page 57. The Vegg is a vegan egg yolk powder that we reviewed when it launched last year. We developed the baked frittata recipe while reviewing the product...as there were very few Vegg recipes around at the time for us to test:

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: Nakd Crunch Bars

Strawberry Crunch, Banana Crunch and Cocoa Crunch fruit and cereal bars. We have to confess that we're not big fans of the regular Nakd bars, which are a little 'textureless'. We're glad to see the company has now brought out some more exciting bars with added crunch:

Review: Jus-Rol Pain au Chocolat

Vegan pain au chocolat that you bake from chilled dough. We recently reviewed the bake-at-home croissants that Jus-Rol produce and thought we'd better follow up with the even more enticing looking Pain au chocolat rolls. You get 6 rolls, in a box that has a very good shelf life if kept in the fridge - long enough to keep in on stand-by for a lazy Sunday morning...when you eventually get one.

Review: Soreen Banana Loaf & Lunchbox Loaves

Banana flavoured fruit loafs from malt loaf maker Soreen. Full size banana loafs plus mini 'lunchbox loaves' in the same flavour. If you're a lover of malt loaf, that dark squidgy, moist fruit loaf, you'll know that Soreen isn't vegan. The company stubbornly refuses to change the recipe to omit the milk, but whenever they diversify, such as with these banana loaves, the ingredients are usually dairy-free:

Review: Mrs Unis' Naan Bread

Dairy-Free naan bread from Scottish producer Mrs Unis. It's hard to find vegan naan (or nan) bread, as the recipe usually includes yoghurt in some form. Tesco 'Light Choices' mini naans are vegan, but they're not great, so it's good to find some authentic ones:

Review: Joya Soya Natural Yoghurt

After reviewing the fruity flavours, we look at the natural yoghurt from Austrian producer Joya. This is a genuine natural yoghurt, with soya milk and cultures, but has just a little maize starch in there to thicken it. The Joya selling point is that their beans are organic and European grown, on their own home soil in Austria:

Review: Sainsbury's Choc Chip Peanut Butter

Crunchy peanut butter with dark chocolate chips in it. At least that's what the jar says. We'd describe it more as peanut butter with swirls of chocolate sauce in it...at least at this time of year anyway:

Review: Dobla Belgian Chocolate Dessert Cups

Chocolate cups in the style of 'cupcake cases' for ice cream. Fill them with your favourite dairy-free ice cream, soft fruit, custard, or whatever takes your fancy. These dessert cups are made purely from dark Belgian chocolate with a cocoa content of 49%. We dug out the ice cream for a special mid-week dessert:

Review: Chocolate Weetabix

From the official Weetabix vegan list - chocolate breakfast cereal with both cocoa and choc chips. These 'Weetabix with Chocolate' have recently been reformulated. The low sugar claims appear to be gone, and these are sweeter than before, but we won't hold that against them. So with Rice Dream at the ready - have you had your Weetabix?

Review: Eskal Wafer Rolls with Chocolate Cream

Gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free wafer tubes for ice cream. Eskal produce a range of free-from foods, some of which are certified by the Vegan Society, including these chocolate wafer rolls. We found them in an independent health food shop and thought they'd be great served with some dairy-free ice cream:

Review: Viana Bonanza Veggie Steaks

Meat-free 4oz steaks from German firm Viana. These are slightly spicy wheat/soy protein patties of 105g (4oz) each. You get two in a pack. They can be pan-fried or cooked in the oven, or even on the barbecue. We served some up with french fries and petits pois for a vegan steak-frites:

Review: Clif Bars..Fudge, Chocolate...Peanut Butter...

A selection of the tastiest vegan Clif energy bars in 'Chocolate Almond Fudge', 'White Chocolate Macadamia Nut' and 'Crunchy Peanut Butter' flavours. Helpfully illustrated with a chap climbing a cliff. We didn't have a handy cliff and so reviewed these tasty sounding bars with both feet firmly on the ground: