Review: Ravioriselli Ravioli with MozzaRisella

Egg-free fresh pasta with dairy-free cheese filling. Vegan ravioli made with the best vegan cheese is like a dream come true. When we heard that MozzaRisella were expanding their product line, we couldn't wait to test some of it. The company sent us some review samples of the spinach ravioli and courgette (zucchini) ravioli, both of which have CreamyRisella within:

Review: FRANK Snack Bars

Chocolate covered cereal/fruit bars in Orange, Blueberry, Oat, and Double Chocolate flavours. Frank Honest Snacking says the strap line. These aren't cereal bars in the traditional sense, but are similar to Nakd bars, made from blended fruit and cereal. They have a lovely thick dairy-free chocolate topping:

New: Bellissimo Vegan Parmesan

Cherub Dairy Free of New Zealand make a parmesan alternative that's now available in the UK. Last year we reviewed a similar product called Parmazano, by Life Free From, but that has since been discontinued. This new Bellissimo product comes in a similar shaker pack and is designed as a cheesy topping for pasta:

Book Launch: Essential Vegan Cookbook

Tomorrow sees the launch of Vanessa Almeida's new cookbook. Sharing a title with the name of her blog, the 'Essential Vegan' Cookbook contains over 60 recipes. Originally launched last December in Portuguese this limited edition run was an instant success in the author's home country of Brazil, inspiring Vanessa to produce an English edition:

Exclusive: Review of Re-Lasagna Vegan Lasagne Kit

Genuine italian lasagne, but meat and dairy free, from your own kitchen. There aren't many ready-made vegan lasagnes available in the UK... in fact we don't know of any (maybe you do?). If you want lasagne for dinner therefore, you can eat out, or spend an hour or two in the kitchen. Italian chef Gilberto Argini is about to fill this gap in the market with his new Bio-Vegan Lasagne-in-a-box. We've been given an exclusive preview of the new kit (via UPS from Italy!):

Review: Rakusen's Dairy-Free Chocolate Digestives

Kosher/Parev biscuits with dark chocolate coating from Leeds firm Rakusen's. Dark chocolate digestives often have 'milk fat' in the dark chocolate, which is no good for us vegans. These ones, found in Sainsburys, are dairy-free:

Review: Wicken Fen Carrot & Coriander Sausages

Gluten-Free vegan sausages made with soya...and 11% carrots. The Wicken Fen brand has been around in the UK for over 20 years, but seems to come and go depending on the weather. Currently stocked in Sainsburys as well as health food shops, the range includes falafel and various types of veggie sausage (not all vegan). The carrot and coriander ones are some of the very few vegan and gluten-free sausages you can buy:

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: