Review: Sweet Vegan 'Try Me' Marshmallows

UPDATE: Sweet Vegan are now trading as Marshmallow Deli

Sweet Vegan 'Try Me' Marshmallows

Taster pack of assorted vegan marshmallows from Nottingham producer Sweet Vegan. This is a great way to sample a selection of the marshmallow flavours that Sweet Vegan offer. Vanilla, Chocolate, Coconut, Strawberry and Banana came in our pack, although you may get cherry in yours.

The Big Cheese: 11 brands of vegan cheese

Vegan Cheese Selection


The biggest ever vegan cheese taste test. Coming shortly on Veganoo. We've assembled a huge vegan cheeseboard covering 11 brands of vegan cheese available in the UK. The cheeses are Swiss, German, Italian, American and of course British.

The names can be confusingly similar if you're a new vegan... Veganic, Vegourmet, Vegusto, Vegerella, MozzaRisella, Tofutti, Teese, Sheese, Cheezly, Jeezini.., and SoyaToo. We couldn't get hold of any Daiya, but the Tofutti and Teese are American takes on vegan cheese.

We're going to be putting them to the ultimate Taste Test, or should we say taste tests... as they'll be tested for meltability and how they taste hot, as well as how they taste cold.

Budget Vegan: Hills Cream Sandwich Biscuits

Hills Cream Sandwich Biscuits

Digestive Creams, Orange Creams, Chocolate Creams... 4 packs for a pound! These are the cheapest biscuits we know of, but they're one of our favourites. Hills Biscuits are sold in Nisa stores at this bargain offer price...mix and match any four packs for a pound. Avoid the custard, coconut and strawberry creams which all contain dairy, but take your pick of the others:

Review: Vantastic Schnouggi Nougat Bar

Vantastic Schnouggi Nougat Bar

Hazelnut 'nougat' bar from Vantastic Foods. Firstly, a German lesson: Nougat means something different in Germany than it does in the UK/US and France. German 'nougat' is what we call 'gianduja', in other words sweet hazelnut chocolate. This is a mini bar of gianduja:

Review: Choc Shot Liquid Chocolate


Versatile vegan squeezy chocolate for drinks, toppings and more. New from the makers of Sweet Freedom is a novel product in the form of liquid chocolate in a squeezy bottle. This blend of Sweet Freedom (fruit based sweetener) and cocoa can be made into hot chocolate, milkshakes and sauces, or used as a topping on ice cream, porridge or toast:

Budget Vegan: Giannis Ice Cream Cones at Aldi


Vegan waffle cones in 10 packs from Aldi. We've now found so many vegan ice cream cones that we wonder if there are any non-vegan ones anymore? These ones are the continental crispy waffle style cones rather than the wafer kind. We grabbed the dairy-free ice cream from the freezer and did yet another cone review. It's a hard life, dear reader...

Budget Vegan: Burton's Jammie / Choccie Dodgers


Twin packs of Jammie Dodgers and Choccie Dodgers from Poundland. You've probably had a Jammie Dodger or two, but have you seen Burton's Choccie Dodgers? They're both currently on sale in Poundland in packs of two. Are either as good as you remember from childhood?

Review: Askeys Crackin Chocolate Ice Cream Topping

Askeys Crackin Chocolate Ice Cream Topping

Vegan 'Ice Magic'... a hard-setting chocolate shell topping for ice cream. Just like Ice Magic, this is a chocolate sauce that you pour on ice cream that sets instantly to form a chocolate shell:

Review: Jus-Rol Croissants

Jus-Rol Croissants

Freshly baked vegan croissants...popped from a tube in the fridge. It's very hard to find vegan croissants, in fact this is the only option we know about, other than to make them yourself. This way is far quicker of course...the tube lasts for about 2 months in the fridge, and once there, you're only ever 15 minutes away from fresh crispy croissants:

Review: Lotus Caramelised Biscuits


The taste of Speculoos and the perfect biscuit for coffee. They've also been around since 1932. Lotus biscuits are the ones you often get as a complimentary treat in cafes when you order a coffee. It's handy to know that these are vegan if you're given one with your soya latte. They come in packs like this in supermarkets, but you're more likely to get an individually wrapped one in a cafe.

Review: Booja Booja Champagne Truffles

Booja Booja Champagne Truffles

Rich, dark, dairy-free chocolate truffles with real champagne. "Everyone needs a little Booja-Booja now and then" goes the tagline, and we have to agree. These are not everyday chocolates and are pretty expensive, but for a special occasion or celebration, they're worth every penny.

Review: Free & Easy Dairy-Free Cheese Sauce Mix

Free & Easy Dairy-Free Cheese Flavour Sauce Mix

Vegan cheese sauce powder for cheesy sauce in 3 minutes. At least that's what it says on the pack. This stuff has been around for years, but has recently been re-branded so we thought we'd give it a try. This isn't an 'instant' mix that you just add boing water to... you have to cook it in a pan. We made some up as a cheesy sauce for pasta to give it a whirl:

Review: Viana Picknicker Veggie Snack

Viana Picknicker Veggie Snack

Vegan meaty sausage snack, sort of a vegan pepperami. These are similar to Topas Space Bars - they're both meaty finger snacks, offering a flesh-free meaty hit while away from home:

Review: Biona Large Ravioli (Spinach & Leek)

Biona Large Ravioli (Spinach & Leek)

Enormous egg-free ravioli from Biona Organic. Vegan ravioli are rare, especially large restaurant-sized ones such as these. These look like egg pasta at first glance, so you may have passed them by on the shelf, especially as they aren't even labelled vegan (come on Biona!). That nice yellow colour is in fact just turmeric, but it does make the fresh pasta look appetising:

Review: Viana Bratwurst Sausages

Viana Bratwurst Vegan Sausages

Thick, meaty, vegan sausages for frying, from TofuTown company Viana. A limited range of Viana products are available in the UK, and these sausages are one of the more common lines. Bratwurst are traditionally pork sausages, but these are naturally a blend of tofu and gluten:

German Vegan: Chocolate Coconut / Rum Truffle Bites

Berggold Kokos Flocken and Streusel Kugeln chocolates

Kokos Flocken and Streusel Kugeln chocolates from Berggold of Germany. That roughly translates as 'coconut flakes' and 'sprinkle balls'. German supermarkets and drugstores are always stocked with cheap chocolates like these, and luckily they hardly ever use milk chocolate. The coconut ones are basically Bounty bites, while the sprinkle balls are a sort of rum truffle:

Review: Vegusto Luncheon Roll, Lyon-style

Vegusto Luncheon Roll, Lyon-style

Slicing sausage from the Vegusto range of vegan meats and cheeses. We've been sampling some of Vegusto's range recently and the idea of a good slicing sausage appeals greatly. Lyon sausage is apparently a highly-seasoned smoked pork sausage with a bit of garlic, but we've never tried it so can't comment on authenticity. Let's review it as a versatile vegan slicing sausage:

Vegan Easter: What Egg did you get?


We got a Choices Caramel! It's not just kids that get chocolate eggs right? We were lucky enough to be given an egg we hadn't already reviewed, and what an egg it is. We hadn't noticed on our shop trawl that this egg is actually caramel-flavoured chocolate:

German Vegan: Pural Bio Bis Sandwich Biscuits

German Vegan: Pural Bio Bis Sandwich Biscuits

Germany is a great place to buy vegan groceries and we are lucky enough to have some brought over from time to time. Doppelkekse (sandwich biscuits) are popular over there and these organic ones from Pural are really good. They are like digestive biscuits sandwiched with the vanilla fondant you'd get in a custard cream:

Guest Post: Animal testing banned, but are we really cruelty free?


Guest blogger Karra Rothery looks at the EU ban on animal-tested cosmetics that came into force earlier this month. Originally published on Karra's blog http://karrarothery.blogspot.co.uk

11th of March will be a day to remember. A day that will go down in history for animal welfare. It was the day that any cosmetics that have been, or had their ingredients tested on animals, were banned from being sold in the EU. Hip hip hooray! Since 2004 companies in the EU were banned from using animal tests for cosmetics, however they were still allowed to sell them if they had been animal tested abroad. So now we have real reason to celebrate!?

Review: SoyGo Soy Creamer

SoyGo Soy Creamer - vegan coffee creamer

Instant vegan coffee creamer / tea creamer. This is powdered creamer in single-serve sachets produced by Saving Opus One of Georgia USA. There have been several attempts to fill this gap in the market and none have yet been successful (anyone remember Soya Maid from Pritchitts, the makers of the ubiquitous Millac Maid?). Does this latest creamer finally give vegans a break from black coffee when away from home?

Review: Cosy Organic Teas


A range of vegan-certified organic teas from Beyond The Bean in Bristol. The teas come in 9 flavours ranging from English Breakfast, to green teas and fruity teas. Some of the range is Fairtrade certified. We felt like a tea binge, so we made them all at once, pointed our little fingers out and and set about tea-tasting:

Review: Redwood Smoked Salmon Style Slices

Redwood Smoked Salmon Style Slices

Vegan smoked salmon slices from the Redwood Vegideli range. We looked for these at Christmas but couldn't find them, and only recently saw some lurking at the back of a wholefood store fridge. Vegan smoked salmon is so ridiculous, this couldn't possibly work... could it?

Vegan Easter: Raw Choc Co's Vanoffe Dark Bar

The Raw Chocolate Co Vanoffe Dark

A raw chocolate treat for your dairy-free Easter. We've reviewed the 'Vanoffe' bar before as part of our wider review of the goodies available from The Raw Chocolate Co, but the Dark version is now available in a new 44g bar. That's 15 chunks of caramel / vanilla / toffee chocolate goodness for your Easter pleasure:

Review: Vegusto Wieners

Vegusto Vegan Wieners

Vegan sausages, German/Austrian style, from Swiss firm Vegusto. The definition of Wieners or Vienna sausages varies wildly, and this is even more the case with vegan versions. German firm Taifun produce tofu wieners which are now widely available in the UK (even in Waitrose), but those and these have nothing in common except the name:

Review: Vegusto Sandwich Slices, Deli-style

Vegusto Sandwich Slices, Deli-style

Meat-free deli cuts from Swiss firm Vegusto. Since arriving in the UK in 2011, Vegusto's range and reach have continued to expand. We found a large selection of Vegusto's vegan meats and cheeses at Out of This World in Nottingham, which is a sure sign of the push into the provinces. Amongst other things, we grabbed a pack of deli cuts which are gluten-based and dubbed 'sandwich slices':

Review: Fry's Hot Dog Sausages

Fry's Original Meat Free Hot Dogs

More vegan hot dogs, to show Granovita how it should be done. The Frys Family range of frozen vegan food is now rebranded and looking great. It's worth noting that VEGAN gets the top spot in the dietary claims on the front of the pack, without the need for the word 'vegetarian' to appear anywhere...  Consumers can now be assumed to know that 'vegan' covers both. These not-dogs come frozen, in packs of 8. How do they compare to the Redwood hot dogs we reviewed last week?

Vegan Easter: Sjaak's Filled Chocolate Easter Eggs

Sjaak's Filled Chocolate Vegan Easter Eggs

Your Easter Egg hunt is over! Five organic vegan ‘milk’ chocolate eggs filled with vanilla truffle, raspberry truffle, almond butter, creamy caramel and peanut butter. These foil-wrapped eggs are just a little bit bigger than those famous creme eggs that vegans can't eat, and come in a little presentation box. Creamy caramel... and peanut butter... tell me more:

Vegan Easter: Sjaak's Nuts & Chews Chocolates

Sjaak's Chocolate Nuts & Chews Assortment

Easter means chocolate right? But not always eggs. Departing with tradition (and orthodoxy), this box of chocolates would make a great gift for a vegan Easter. We often find vegan Easter eggs come without any goodies within... which is boring... so why not skip that, and just buy some great chocolates? This Sjaaaks assortment is a delicious selection of caramels and nutty chews with a rice-milk covering: