Review: Aldi 'Dairyfine' Chocolate Bars

Aldi Dairyfine Vegan Chocolate

Dairy-free chocolate from budget supermarket Aldi. It's quite odd to name your entire chocolate range 'Dairyfine' as if somehow chocolate and dairy products are inseparable, but that's Aldi for you. We vegans like our chocolate without the cow juice, so it's just as well that Aldi make a large range of dark chocolate without so much as a drop of milk fat in it. These two bars of plain dark and mint creme chocolate offer great value for money too:

Gluten-Free Vegan Kids: Orgran Itsy Bitsy Bears

Orgran itsy bitsy bears vegan biscuits

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:

Review: Sainsbury's Vegan Cake Sprinkles

Review: Sainsbury's Vegan Cake Sprinkles

A couple of vegan options for sprinkling your vegan cakes with. Most cake decorations contain animal products in one form or another, from gelatin to cochineal, shellac to beeswax. These ones from Sainsbury's are free from all of that stuff. The vegan sprinkles at Sainsbury's are the Sugar Stars and the Eric & Erica Sprinkles (elephant shapes):

VEGANWURST: Wheaty Toro Sausages Review (Weenies)

Topas Wheaty ToRo vegan sausages

Four fat sausages sizzling in a pan... Fantastic vegan sausages from German firm Topas, sold under their Wheaty label. These Toro sausages are a mix of tofu and wheat protein and that makes them rather special because the texture is just right. The German word 'knackig' best describes these little beauties. Knackig translates as 'crispy/crunchy' but also 'luscious' and that's the perfect description for these sausages:

Vegan Beer Review: Nottingham Beer Festival

Vegan Beers at the Nottingham Beer Festival

We got half way through the 14 vegan beers on offer at the Nottingham beer festival before running out of drinking time. 14 vegan beers is almost a vegan beer festival in itself and it's great to see so many of them actually labelled as vegan on the barrels. If you're at the Nottingham Beer Festival tonight or tomorrow night, the vegan options are: 025, 053, 054, 055, 316, 347, 485, 527, 531, 808, 812, 1008, 1009, 1029. Here's what we thought of the 7 beers we tried:

Review: Celtic Choices Chocolate Orange Bar

Celtic Choices Choc 'n' Orange Bar is vegan

Fantastic vegan faux-milk choc 'n' orange bar. We've reviewed Celtic chocolate previously and we're big fans of their faux milk chocolate which is really smooth and creamy. Celtic have now extended their Choices free-from range to include chocolate bars and chocolate buttons. This chocolate orange bar is the closest vegan alternative to that classic Terry's Chocolate Orange taste (that sadly isn't vegan even though they make a dark chocolate version). 

Suffering Scoreboard: Vegetarians -vs- Vegans

Vegetarians vs Vegans Animal Suffering Scoreboard
Vegetarians have more in common with meat eaters than vegans, so why are they so often grouped together? On the scale of animal suffering, vegetarians do badly. Animals are not saved from slaughter by being vegetarian... cows and chickens are still killed when they stop being productive, it's just that vegetarians don't eat their flesh.

Review: The Raw Chocolate Co choccy bars

The Raw Chocolate Company Vegan Chocolate Bars

More from the Raw Chocolate Company after our review of their chocolate covered berries. A selection of dairy-free mini bars in an unusual range of flavours. Rich cocoa packed Pitch Dark at one end of the spectrum through to sweet caramel Vanoffe at the other. All of it raw and some of the bars sugar-free too:

Next Year: Vegfest 2013 Dates Announced

Bristol Vegfest 2012

Brighton and Bristol Vegfest dates have been revealed for next year. The UK's biggest vegan festivals will be held in Brighton in March, and Bristol in May.

The dates for the VegfestUK shows in 2013 are as follows:

Brighton - March 16th 17th - website now live www.brighton.vegfest.co.uk

Bristol - May 24th 25th 26th - website now live  www.bristol.vegfest.co.uk

Review: The Raw Chocolate Co chocolate berries

Organic vegan dried fruits covered in raw chocolate.

Appearances can be deceptive. Some vegan foods can look quite 'worthy', and that was our first thought on opening up these packs of dried fruits. These various berries are covered in chocolate and then dusted in cocoa, but they do look like a bit like animal droppings. Luckily for us, they actually taste fantastic:

This Month: West Midlands Vegan Festival

West Midlands Vegan Festival
#WMVF
It's October already and that means it's only a few short weeks until this year's bigger and better West Midlands Vegan Festival takes place in Wolverhampton. The festival has expanded again and will now take place in two large halls, with 6 smaller rooms for talks and demos. Upwards of 2000 people are expected to attend and we'll be there to bring you news and photos from the event.

Four things you can do with nufu (peanut tofu)


We've finally got through those four blocks of nufu and here's what we made. Just like tofu, nufu is pretty versatile, but here's what you should know, if you're going to make it. Firstly, it tastes of peanuts.. this sounds obvious but it's a contrast with tofu which is pretty bland. It's also quite crumbly and delicate, a little like lopino (lupin tofu) if you've ever tried that. Lastly, it's also quite astringent and a little bitter, which probably comes from the double coagulators we used (nigari and gypsum). The bitterness can be offset with a touch of sugar and a pinch of salt.

Plantfoods: 'Nufu'... make tofu from peanuts

nufu - peanut curd - peanut tofu

UPDATE: The step-by-step guide to making nufu is now live at plantfoods.org 

Our sister site plantfoods.org will shortly have a write-up on our experiment to make nufu... tofu made from peanuts. Peanuts are a protein-rich legume, a lot like soybeans, and the results are very similar to tofu. The yield is excellent...you get a kilogram of peanut curd... four of those blocks above, from just 500g of peanuts. The curd still tastes peanutty too, so makes a tasty alternative to tofu:

Recipe: Smashing Tarts' Vegan Whoopie Pies


The folks at vegan bakery Smashing Tarts in Glasgow have given us the recipe for their rock star approved vegan whoopie pies. Smashing Tarts is a family run business supplying local cafes and they also bake to order for special occasions. Originally from Canada, Lisa and Navarro moved to Glasgow in 2007. They believe that everyone needs yummy cake, regardless of dietary requirements... and we couldn't agree more:

Quick Plug: The Vegan Cakery


Leicester's answer to Ms Cupcake? Makers of vegan cupcakes, wedding cakes, birthday cakes and more, the Vegan Cakery is a vegan cake making business started earlier this year by Michelle Orme. Their fabulous range of cakes is currently sold online and at vegan events across the midlands. They don't have a retail presence of their own, but that hasn't stopped Michelle from making her cakes available on the high street, as they're also stocked at a couple of venues in the Leicester area:

Review: VEGANDELI Mortadella and Morcilla sausage


More vegan slicing sausage from Deli-Frys...or should we say VEGANDELI as they will now be known. We recently reviewed their mock ham and mock smoked chorizo sausage and now it's the turn of two other types of slicing sausage...Italian Mortadella and Spanish Morcilla. These types of sausage might be familiar to you if you frequent New York delis, but are less well known in the UK than the ubiquitous Chorizo. Mortadella is a garlicky sausage, while Morcilla is...well, more of a bloody concoction in the manner of black pudding.

Rebrand: Deli-Frys becomes....VEGANDELI

The new VEGANDELI range on Bute Island's Website
Bute Island are rebranding their Deli-Frys range of vegan meats and sausages. The range only recently launched in the UK, and products with the Deli-Frys name have only just started appearing in shops. We speculate that the Deli-Frys name was confusing for consumers, and maybe FRYS were more than a little unhappy about the similarity with their own brand name.

Siri: I'm Vegan


Apple's iOS 6 has finally made Siri useful in the UK...but not for UK vegans... The biggest problem for UK vegans is that Siri can't understand the word vegan unless you say VAYgan in some mid-atlantic twang. If you say VEEgan like we do here in England (and where the word 'vegan' was coined, let's not forget..) it thinks you're saying 'Feagan' which is a surname. Even if you put that in context and say 'Show me local vegan restaurants', it hears 'Show me local leading restaurants'. It's like it's wilfully trying to mishear you.

Don't Panic: Sheese lives on



The website for Bute Island Foods is gone, along with the website for Deli-Frys as we mentioned in our recent review. Fear not, Sheese lovers, we spoke to them today and they're alive and well and are now aware of the problems. We're planning to review some more Deli Frys mock meats in the coming days.

UPDATE: Deli-Frys has been rebranded as VEGANDELI

Question: Is Bournville vegan?

Is Bournville Chocolate vegan?

Unrelated to today's other post...

The ingredients list on the back of Cadbury's Bournville chocolate has changed back and forth over the years to include or exclude dairy products...usually milk fat. The current ingredients list is animal free, but includes one of those annoying disclaimers:

When is vegan-certified chocolate not vegan?



When it comes with live maggots...  We're not going to name the brand as they're a small company, but this probably wouldn't have scored highly in our review...

Review: Lima Seitan Pieces...Bottled Seitan


What have the Belgians ever done for us? Well they've certainly made seitan much more accessible...by putting it in a jar. You can make your own seitan...in a couple of hours, or you can buy chilled seitan...but what if you want it in the store cupboard, ready to go? Lima has the long life solution you're looking for. These large jars are sold across Europe for seitan worshippers everywhere:

Gluten-Free Vegan: Mamma Cucina Quiches Review

Mamma Cucina Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Vegetable Quiches

Delicious dairy-free quiches....at least that's what it says on the pack. You may have seen these gluten, egg and dairy free quiches in the freezer at Holland & Barrett. The Mamma Cucina brand from Triano (the Tofutti makers) also appears on cheesecakes and pizzas. We popped a couple of these mini quiches in the oven to see if they're any good.

Review: Allsep's Party Mix Jelly Sweets

Allsep's Party Mix Jelly Sweets Vegan/Vegetarian

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:

Review: Deli Fry's Mock Meats


If you've been to a recent VegFest you might have sampled Bute Island's range of mock meats, sold under the Deli-Fry's label. That's not to be confused with Frys...our favourite frozen mock meat producer. Deli-Fry's stuff is all ambient packaged in vac pacs and ready to eat. We put the mock ham and mock chorizo to the test:


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:

Review: Smart Fries..air popped potato sticks


For UK readers these are crisps rather than chips...and for US readers these are chips rather than fries. Now that's out of the way, on with the review. With "80% less fat than regular potato chips" according to the pack, these potato sticks claim to be healthier than your usual potato-based snack. They're air-popped, which we guess means they're not deep fried...

Review: Pudology Puds....sshh...they're vegan


We've got our hands on the three new vegan desserts produced by gluten, egg and dairy free producer Pudology. The espresso and mango flavours don't seem to have made it to market just yet, but we've got the chocolate, banoffee and strawberry puds to keep us happy. The desserts are sold singly or in twin packs and are beautiful to look at...with colourful designs and clear pots so you can see what you're getting:

Review: Askeys Brandy Snap Baskets

Askeys Brandy Snap Baskets are vegan

A vegan version of that splendid but peculiar affair...the brandy snap basket. We say peculiar because they never contain brandy, and are never flat like a 'snap' biscuit. They probably used to be made with brandy, and are still usually made with butter...which thankfully these aren't. These ginger flavoured baskets are designed to be filled with ice cream, so we added a scoop of the dairy-free stuff and gave them a try.

Review: Dorset Cereals Breakfast Pot

Dorset Cereals Breakfast Pot (muesli) - vegan

We recently reviewed Dorset Cereals vegan chocolate macadamia bar and now it's the turn of their breakfast cereal...a 'breakfast pot' in fact. This is a single serving of muesli in an oversized plastic pot...you supply your own milk. It isn't the cheapest way to get your breakfast, but if you're away from home it's about the healthiest option available. We filled ours with Rice Dream and gave it a try.