Book Review: The Fresh Vegan Kitchen

New recipe book from vegan street food pioneers and founders of Wholefood Heaven, David and Charlotte Bailey. The book includes cooked and raw food recipes, and focuses on Asian, Indian, Spanish and Middle Eastern dishes, both sweet and savoury. It's a beautiful hardback book, but do the recipes deserve the glossy presentation?

New: Hotel Chocolat 'Milk-Free Milk Chocolate'

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.

Review: Amisa Vegana Gouda Style Cheese

Organic vegan grated cheese with coconut oil and lupin flour. With Viotros, the Greek cheese maker, now doing contract manufacturing of dairy-free cheese, we're seeing a lot of very similar vegan cheeses on the market. Veganic, Violife, Jeezini and even Field Roast's Chao are all variations on the same product, and Amisa have joined in the fun too:

Review: Astonish Cleaning Products

Vegan certified, cruelty-free and British made. Ideal for an early spring clean. The Astonish marketing team sent us a selection of products to review - the Oven & Cookware Cleaner, the Floor Cleaner and the Anti-Bacterial Cleanser. The early new year sunshine put us in the mood for the spring clean:

Review: Almond Dream Ice Cream

Dairy-free, made from almond milk, by the Rice Dream people. Velvety Vanilla and Mint Chocolate Chip. We finally found some of this in a Little Waitrose, but not the two most exciting flavours - the Praline Crunch and the Salted Caramel were not stocked unfortunately. We'll add those when we find them, but does Almond Dream live up to the hype?

Review: VBites Turkey Style Goujons

Vegan party food from the 2014 Festive Range. We got these in as a sort of Boxing Day thing, as naturally there is no leftover Turkey to use up. These faux-turkey breadcrumbed strips are chilled, with a good shelf life, and only need a quick blast in the oven. They should be ideal vegan buffet food:

Opinion: Ottolenghi versus Tofurky

I’ve never warmed to Yotam Ottolenghi, the Guardian food columnist and chain restaurateur. Maybe that’s because he’s a meat eater who did the ‘vegetarian’ column in the Guardian for a while, or because his recipes don’t appeal to plant eaters, with their reliance on egg and dairy. After reading his opinions about Tofurky, my aversion has only grown:

Editor's Picks: Best Vegan Products of 2014

Our pick of the ten vegan products that most impressed us this year, from yoghurts to ice cream, burgers to chocolate, crisps to spray cream. We concluded last year, that 2013 had been an exceptional year for vegan produce, and maybe we haven't seen quite as many great launches in 2014. How far we've come in the last decade though, that we have to pick and choose from so many good vegan foods. Read on for the Editor's picks of the best vegan products of 2014.

Review: Booja Booja 'chilled selection'

New sophisticated mini boxes of truffles in bright and vibrant colours that ditch the old fashioned styling of the traditional lines. These chocolates are sold chilled - that is you'll find them in the dessert chiller at Waitrose or in your local wholefood shop. The fridge treatment is necessary because of the new 'delicate' flavours:

Vegan Christmas: Elizabeth Shaw Gingerbread Crisp Chocolates

Limited Edition honeycomb crisp chocolates, perfect for the festive season. These dark chocolates are much more versatile than the mint ones, which are usually sidelined as after dinner chocolates:

Review: Ethicoco Oat Milk Chocolate

Faux milk chocolate, made with oat milk instead of the usual rice milk. Ethicoco are a startup bean-to-bar producer making all-vegan all-organic fair trade chocolate, from imported beans. The guys at Ethicoco were kind enough to send us a couple of sample bars for our review... and we're excited about it..

Review: The Mighty Burger Co - Original Burgers

Bristol startup making gluten-free vegan burgers. We've been on the lookout for these since they launched earlier in the year, and this pack of two burgers arrived with the Vegan Tuck Box in November:

Review: Lakeland 'Experichef' Agar Powder

Not flakes, but powder, just like all those recipes by Isa and Miyoko require. In the UK you can buy agar flakes in any wholefood shop, but finding the powder usually means buying online. Lakeland's Experichef range includes xanthan gum (also used by Miyoko for cheese making), plus this agar agar. We tested it out on a cheesecake:

Review: Omni Superfood

Vegan protein powder and nutritional supplement with hemp and pea protein, maca, lucuma and MSM. It's natural, raw, organic and is low fat, low sugar and low calorie. The makers claim it supports your natural digestive, immune, reproductive and muscle systems. Available in separate versions for men and women. This is a review of the men's version...

Review: Hraska Gluten/Egg Replacers

Yep, these mixes function as both egg and gluten replacers. If you think about it, egg and gluten both provide structure in baking, and Czech firm Hraska have developed products that do a similar thing. The UK distributor Bearsted Foods sent us two of the mixes for review - the Flour Mix and the Batter Mix:

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!

Vegan Life: The Vegan Police

The latest Vegan Life magazine has a great article entitled 'Naughty but Nice' about a vegan baker being lectured by the Vegan Police. Using sugar, eating vegan convenience food, or baking indulgent vegan cakes isn't 'vegan' enough for them. We've come across this before in the comments we get here at Veganoo. When we review vegan sweet treats we'll often get comments such as 'why are you reviewing this junk food??"

Happy 21st: Ethical Wares

UK vegan shoe company Ethical Wares have been trading for 21 years this year, which is a long time for a Vegan business. To mark the milestone, the company have produced an anniversary video, which we're happy to share!

Review: Parmezzano Vegan Parmesan

Another parmesan-in-a-can option for your dairy-free pasta topping. The latest in a growing line of these type of products, this Vantastic one is based on soya flour. We've seen cashew and coconut used in recent alternatives, so this one is one of the more 'conventional' offerings:

Vegan Shopper: Aldi Haul

A selection of Aldi's vegan products including stollen, mince pies, malt loaf, gnocchi, jelly and chocolate. Aldi may not have a vegan list, but that doesn't mean you can't buy vegan cake, pies, jelly and chocolate there... you just have to look harder for it.

Vegan Shopper: Supermarket Vegan Lists

UPDATE: Head straight to the Vegan Womble for the latest lists which are maintained on this page:

http://theveganwomble.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/latest-supermarket-vegan-lists.html

The hardworking Vegan Womble has gathered vegan lists from Waitrose, M&S, Sainsburys, Tesco, and the Coop, as well as Walkers, KP, Quaker Oats, Warburtons and more. We've got the links below, along with some great guides from Vegan Womble on shopping vegan in the UK:

Review: Amy's Kitchen Breakfast Sandwich

Vegan egg and sausage muffin. Egg-free, dairy-free, gluten-free. Frozen and ready to microwave for an instant hot breakfast. The marketing team at Amy's sent us a few of these to check out and they were snatched up gleefully! There really is nothing else like this on the market at the moment:

Review: BioVegan Cake Decorations

Organic vegan Chocolate Hearts, Sugar Strands and Mimosas for decorating your egg-free cupcakes and fairy cakes. Biovegan are the company who make lots of vegan packet mixes, from instant ice cream to bread mixes. These cake sprinkles are ideal for vegan home bakers looking for something special:

Review: PureFit Nutrition Bars

Vegan protein bars in Peanut Butter Toffee Crunch, Chocolate Brownie and Berry Almond Crunch flavours. 18g protein per bar, and gluten-free. We picked up these nutrition bars based on the delicious sounding flavours, but there are some good nutritional principles in there too:

Review: CoYo Ice Cream

Coconut-milk ice cream in raw chocolate, vanilla & nutmeg, and sticky date & tamarind flavours. Dairy-free ice cream that's also soya free. If you love CoYo yoghurts (and who doesn't), you'll welcome the arrival of their ice cream. It's got some interesting flavour options:

New: Provamel Natural Yoghurts

Zero-sugar and agave-sweetened options with the relaunch of the company's large dairy-free yoghurt pots. Provamel's organic natural yoghurt has been on the shelves for years, but is now available in two varieties. As well as an agave-sweetened plain yoghurt, there is a completely zero-sugar option too. The company sent us a couple of pots for review:

Review: Rhythm Coconut Milk

Virgin cold-pressed coconut milk. Raw, chilled and available in a pouch pack. You'd normally expect to find coconut milk in a can, but this stuff is different. Made from the first cold-pressing of coconuts sourced from the Philippines. It's more expensive than canned milk, so is it worth it?

Is It Vegan: Stork Block

The vitamin D might make you doubt it, but yes, Stork baking margarine is vegan. We verified the source of the vitamin D with the manufacturer (see below). The company advised us that the vitamin is plant-derived (Vitamin D2) and the product is vegan.

Review: Dandies Marshmallows

Air-puffed and super-melty vegan marshmallows. Gluten-free and gelatin-free. We picked these up in our haul from Veganz in Berlin - they're hard to get hold of in the UK. Dandies are big in the US, along with Sweet & Sara. Dandies use tapioca and carrageenan which make them ideal for melting:

Review: Secret Sausages

Chilli and Coriander flavour. Vegan sausages with skins! Gluten-free and packed with veg. The idea behind Secret Sausages is that you can get your kids (or kid yourself) to eat veg, if the veg is disguised as sausages. The range includes six varieties, but at the moment only the Chilli and Coriander ones are vegan. You can grill, fry or barbecue them - and we did!