Vegan chocolate reviews

I’m going to come out with a bit of heresey in the very second sentence of this review. I’m not that fussed about chocolate. There, I said it. Its not that I hate it. Its just that I don’t get what all the fuss is about it. I can review cider as soon as look at it. But chocolate?

I am helped out in my task by the fact that this chocolate is chocolate of the vegan-friendly type. And that its got chillies in it. You see, meh as I am about chocolate I have something of a passion for spicy chillies that make my ears bleed.

Black Widow doesn't quite do that. The chilli is actually a rather subtle undertone rather than the dominant note. That rôle is taken by the geranium essential oil that grim reaper have flavoured the bar with. The geranium is subtly enhanced with a twist of lemon oil all backed by a kick of naga chilli.

Now, I have to confess that, though the blend is pretty delicious, I was a little disappointed not to have something more incendiary. The packet promised "sinfully wicked" which, to me, means, "burns a bit". For readers who have yet to experience the delights of the Naga Jolokia chilli is amongst the world’s hottest, weighing-in at 850,000 scoville heat units, Tabasco sauce is around 3,000 SHU and the world’s hottest chilli, the Dorset Naga kicks out an insane 1,032,310 Scovilles. So, this ought to have been painful to eat. It wasn’t.

That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it. The geranium and lemon gave it an intense turkish delight-like kick. The chocolate was smooth, a little on the sweet side for me, but I tend to favour bitter chocolate. It felt balanced and the cheeky kick of the chilli gave it real character. I would definitely recommend it to my non-chillihead pals. The chilliheads I would tell to melt this stuff down, dip scotch bonnet peppers in it, chuck them in the fridge and then snack on crunchy chocolate coated chillis.

2012-09-04 by Charlie Harvey

Right. The nights are drawing in, the temperature is falling, and it's time for a Back To School choco review. I've emerged from the summery haze to remember that the internet exists, and with it, my intention to put up a review of these lovely cookies.

Now the idea of doing choco reviews was originally inspired by my chum Ciderpunx, who started doing (you guessed it) cider reviews in the hope that one day he would start being given free samples. This dream seemed to have come true for me at least, when (now ex-)classmate Inge presented me with half a bag of these bad boys, baked specially as some kind of vegan graduation treat by our own Michael Murtaugh. What is it with computer programming and veggie cookery, anyway?

These cookies being a gift horse, I couldn't exactly write a bad review. Luckily for me I don't have to - they are YUM. The bag was started (and finished) in the newly-bare studio at Piet Zwart, sitting with two rather dazed new graduands facing the prospect of the summer to come. Goodbye Python scripts and beers on Oude Binnenweg; hello life? Note: cookies are a good thing to have in this scenario. Particularly these ones, as it turns out.

These peanut butter naughties are a throwback to my expat US childhood, and its endless consumption of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Just like Reese's, these cookies look like plain chocolate but actually have a big dollop of peanut butter on the inside. Unlike Reese's, they aren't made with that famously grim Hershey's milk chocolate, so you get all the fun minus the stomach ache, and plus a big helping of smug. They are like the grown-up version, with darker chocolate and much less melty and generally disgusting. Having said that, they are insanely sugary - they seemed to be made with fat granules of very wholesome brown sugar which I was literally crunching between my teeth. They'd probably be really good dipped in coffee. Unfortunately, we'd eaten them all before such an experiment could be carried out. Which, I think, is all that needs saying. Except: free samples? You know where to send them!

A collaborative review with my guest for the weekend, Toby.

Toby says:

This is my first chocolate review, but in recent months I am realising there is a whole world of sweet delicious puddingy stype stuff available for us vegans.

So this began with a bit of fresh air, in flip flops, Nor with ten toenails painted bright purple, me with just one very big toenail painted in the same colour.

We tried to get Alpro chocolate pudding but the supermarket had already shut, so went for a wander. We decided the local sex shop's lick off chocolate might not have ben designed mainly for flavour, so continued till we found a little newsagent with some vegn chocolate and headed home to review it, via a free viewing of a small church containing a very big orchestra.

The chocolate is good. As you can see from the ingredients it is no-nonsense chocolate, but it has quite a milky flavour for such dark chocolate, and a huge amount of cane sugar makes it, well, sweet. There is some very subtle unpleasant hint of something hidden behind the main delicious flavour. A bit like the slight weird taste that soya milk has the first few times you have it (though people feel the same when they change from full fat to semi-skimmed cows milk). Without this taste it would be an easy four out of five, but, though I can't work out what it is, there is something bugging me which makes me want to give it only a three. Though the creamy milkiness could put it back up to four, it is a touch too sweet so I will stick with a round three.

Having said that I will definitely be eating some again next time I visit Nor in Rotterdam.

 

Nor says:

Having decided to write our reviews in secret before comparing notes, I think Toby & I came to similar conclusions on this one.

What I like about this brand is how it's Fairtrade while also being no-frills bog-standard choco, and stocked in all the supermarkets and discount stores here. Having said that this is very basic, stereotypically vegan dark chocolate, it has a rich and intriguing smell that I sat for a good few minutes trying to decipher before actually eating any. It's a dry, complex smell, reminding me of incense mixed with old church; or pheremones and freshly cut stone.

The chocolate itself is in big, fat blocks that you have to nibble like a hamster to avoid hurting your teeth. And it has a flavour to match: full-bodied, melty, fatty & intense. It's not overly bitter or pretentious; in fact it's very sweet, though with a lovely spicy aftertaste. On further chewing, however, I started to think maybe this stuff is rather too fatty & unadulterated - a bit too lardy, perhaps. Two small squares was definitely plenty for me. Though, it definitely makes you want to eat more. I will concur with Toby's compromise of a 3 out of 5 here.

We agreed to leave the last square uneaten as an exercise and proof of our self-control. Definitely a good idea. That said, I look forward to Toby's next visit so I have an excuse to have some more!

So. 'Saf', according to its website, stands for 'simply authentic food' and also means 'pure' in Turkish. Think industrial-scale central London Terre à Terre/ buzzing munch-hub/ all-vegan rather extravagant hang-out. I was taken here by a friend who I initially suspected may have been trying to impress me. However, when I saw this chocolate cake I was forced to consider an ulterior motive. Getting a new review out of me was the pretext, anyway, and so it is only fair that I should now attempt to describe what happened next.

The problem is, describing the chocolate cake at Saf is a somewhat difficult task. Hence the procrastination in actually writing this review. We shared two of them: a dark 'Chocolate & Hazlenut Cake' and a 'White Chocolate & Jasmine Tart' (pictured). The latter is a spongy cheesecake-like affair, the former a frankly obscene little slab of all that is good in the world. Or possibly evil. And when I say 'shared', I mean, he set about demolishing them while I attempted to concentrate on making a drawing. Diligence does not always pay, reader. Although, suffice it to say that even a small helping of these cakes is really more than enough to satisfy your debased vegan cravings. They both combine all that creamy, melty, fluffy, toe-curling fatty goodness with the rather ingenious idea of a crunchy crust made out of raw cacao nibs.

The white tart is described on the menu as "white chocolate and jasmine cream with cacao nib crust, carmelized apricot sauce and espresso syrup". And that only covers a fraction of the innumerable surreal flavours actually contained therein. Same goes for the hazlenut cake, for which the menu only hints at chocolate ganache, hazlenuts and orange coulis along with its cashew/hazlenut/agave crust.

When the head waiter saw me taking notes of the above, I was admonished disapprovingly with the insistence that "you will never make the same! Secret ingredients!". Indeed. Both cakes are smeared in abstract-expressionist sauces of inscrutable origin. I'm sure I detected pumpkin in there somewhere, and it took a while before I realized that the hazlenut cake has hot chilli in it as well. So, like some kind of dirty sexy Spem in Alium, it's pointless trying to keep track of each individual note in these crazy cakes. There comes a point where the urge to review must be abandoned, and you just have to lie back and, well, whatever the opposite of think of England is. Besides, if you sit there intellectualizing for too long your friend will have eaten them all, and there won't be anything left to review!

So, onto rainy adventure of the week #2. I made many intriguing discoveries today, among them: 1. my new shoes have an enormous hole in the bottom, and 2. there exists a little shop in Soho that makes freakin' delicious vegan icecream.

I was hanging with a new pal, enjoying the delightfully cheeky experience of Platform's alternative audio guide to Tate Modern. An interesting challenge negotiating that heaving stressful place while sharing one mp3 player, feeling like a hi-tech reenactment of Montano and Hsieh's Rope Piece.

Anyway, it's well known that Tate Modern induces the need for overpriced snackfood, and said pal mentioned the magic c-word in connection with this gelato place. So, in typically English fashion we got it into our heads that, on what seemed like the rainiest day of the year so far, a pleasant stroll from Southbank to Soho would be a good idea. What could possibly go wrong? With the promising beacon of this mysterious chocolate gelato glinting somehere distant in the sodden maze of Soho, we set off on what ended up being possibly the most thorough tour round Centrepoint I've been on in a while. But it wouldn't be Soho if you didn't spend two hours wandering about muttering, "I'm sure it was just down here...". So, as the puddles seeped more and more irrevocably into my sock, the excitement mounted, and we finally arrived at this little shop which will be added to my list of "amazing places in Soho I'll definitely be visiting again, except I have no idea how to get there or from which direction we came".

As a refreshing change from recent reviews, this is no dairy-free self-righteous healthfood joint. They have pictures of frolicking lambs on their website advertising home-delivery cheese. So, how cool is it that when we visited, they had seven different kinds of vegan icecream on offer? Top of the list of course was this dark chocolate gelato (along with coconut, strawberry and various others), which we had piled into little cardboard tubs and were shortly enjoying on the chairs outside. And, having done a trek to get there that would put Frodo & Sam to shame, I can honestly say it was worth the walk.

To be honest the excitement was so much I can't even remember what it tasted like. Except, 'delicious'. And despite making diligent photos of the original article, my poor friend was sufficiently distracted to lose his phone immediately afterwards. How tragic that everything on there was automagically synced to Apple's terrifying cybercloud, except those photos! Hence, the rather poor substitute of this sketch which I snapped with my webcam on the way home. Sorry folks. What I do remember is that this icecream - sorry, gelato - is very dark, soft and melty, with intense cacao flavour. And according to my companion, powerful sugar & caffeine-induced after effects. Though that may have just been the hypothermia setting in.

Ultimately, while I thoroughly enjoyed the saga of the soggy socks, baffling route and lost phones, I think the moral of the story is this: go to their website, and avail yourself of the 'home delivery' button. Dager, danger!/fuck yes!

Sunshine, daffodils, leaping bunnies. Yes, it's finally arrived: the long anticipated, boring my classmates to tears with excitement, week-long UK Spring Break! So I braved the Holland-London coach this time, sailing through the falling cherry blossom and gleaming green fields via Brussels North, which in this weather looked like a 1950s advertising poster for the EU. But do not fear, dear reader - I am not absconding from my duty this week, and this time I bring you Raw Choc Brownie!

My first adventure of the week was a weekday date with Ciderpunx, to Compton Verney (a remote National Trust-esque place, whose art collection he'd obligingly agreed to accompany me to). The Vitaburst counter at Oxford train station is the highlight of any such journey. It's one of those terrifyingly neon-coloured healthfood bars, that will ply you with every flavour of smoothie complete with every "superfood" supplement you can think of. And every time I visit, the counter is more crowded with inventive vegan snacks. The place is staffed by an unbelievably enthusiastic Aussi, who I think ranks in my mental list of "local characters" and manages somehow to give the impression of being telepathic. Anyway, it was a double espresso for my companion and a tiny little square of "Raw Choc Brownie" for me. Mainly because I liked the typography, admittedly. And so, we were all set for our Springtime excursion.

Sadly the sunshine, daffodils and leaping bunnies were not forthcoming however. The taxi driver who eventually retrieved us, soaked to the core after a thoroughly British day out in the countryside, actually laughed at us for going there at all on such a day. Appalling weather seems to be a recurring, and increasingly endearing, theme in our adventures together. So. I ended up munching this one on the train back, squashed next to a big-wig from a private school writing an incredibly involved email defending recent changes in their scholarship policy. Ah, to be back in Blighty! So, this wasn't the idyllic reviewing experience I was aiming for, but I'll do my best.

I'm afraid I'd eaten it too quickly to take a photo of the actual brownie, which tells you something first of all. This little treat is made by Pulsin, one of these companies specialising in "nutritious snacks" and, I think, going for the gourmet market. It's made of raw fruit and nuts, mainly, so it's terribly healthy - and cane sugar free. It's sweetened with yet another obscure sugar replacement, brown rice malt, and (is this compulsory nowadays?) features green tea extract for some reason too. Apparently it's "gently prepared at a low temperature in a gluten-free kitchen by Ben, Nick and Simon" - which you can believe if you like. (Though to be gently prepared by Ben, Nick and Simon is something I wouldn't mind trying.)

This bar reminds me of the classic Nakd bars that are also made mostly of raw dates, raisins and nuts. This one doesn't have oats in it though, so it has a much less crumbly "cereal bar" feeling and is more like a stodgy cake. It's soft and moist, with big chunks of Almonds which is nice. It's hard to really get a feeling for it, though, because it's about half the size of one of those Nakd bars (and twice the price of course). So, like the Spring Break, it's over far too quickly! My general impression was good, though: chocolatey, but not sickly or over-sweet.

The only problem with these types of bars, I have to say, is that it's pretty hard to make healthy wholefood bars not taste like healthy wholefood bars. I felt like this brownie was somehow trying to hoodwink me out of noticing its true identity: basically, a fruit cake. Under the veneer of chocolatey indulgence, there are distinctive notes of Christmas pudding here.

It was an eventful day in Rotterdam today. As I was walking over to Inge's to present some work-in-progress as part of the Under/Up the Stairs series she's curating, I saw the first ducklings of the year on the canal. Then, when I arrived I realized today was also the Rotterdam marathon - the biggest public event in Holland, apparently. So that would explain the pumping dance music and barbeque smells at the end of the street. It looked to be a good party, too. There were two DJs dressed in fluffy suits - one swigging a tin of beer, smoking a cigar and handing out shots while bopping along as the agonised runners staggered past. Trying to have a straight-faced discussion about art and copyright at Inge's with 90s hits shaking the walls of the house was a pleasantly sureal experience.

Anyway, on the way home it turned out that another rare event was on today - the roughly bi-monthly Swan market in an artists' studio complex round the corner from my house. Good to find, as I'd been accosted on the way out by a group of people looking for it and I had no idea what they were on about. I'd assumed killing swans is illegal in Holland, too. But there were no dead animals here, at least that I could see - this is "the lifestyle market of Rotterdam". I think we got there a bit late, as all the stallholders were packing up and looking understandably exhuasted by the bitter wind that whipped through the little courtyard. (I for one had my wooly hat tied firmly shut under my chin.) Though we weren't too late to come across a stall covered in tiny little chocolate bonbons and other exotic cakes. Our interest quickened when we realised they were all vegan. Now, I wasn't exactly hungry after having taken liberal samples of the snacks laid on at Inge's. But I thought it would be a shame to deprive you, dear reader, of a potential review. So. I picked the most interesting looking one - no mean feat, as this woman specialises in unusual fancy flavours.

This little chocolate comes in its own tiny foil cup. At over 1 euro per piece, if this had been factory-made I'd consider the price extortionate. But as it's locally hand-made by a woman who's had to stand out in the freezing wind all day while the rest of Rotterdam drinks shots and dances in the streets, I'm more than happy to oblige. You've probably guessed by now that it's organic, gluten free and fair trade, too.

And what a tasty little thing it is! For such a tiny chocolate it has a big flavour - a delicious melange of rose and orange, with chunks of hazlenut and candied orange peel inside. Of course, it looks gorgeous too, like one of those soaps from Lush that girls go crazy for - and better than that, because this one you can eat! Naturally I would have gladly eaten more than one, but it's rich enough to be satisfying on its own, which is good. For vegan chocolate it's also nicely mild & creamy; soft and tasty despite sitting in the cold all day. Unlike some of the chocos I've reviewed recently, the unusual combination of flavours here is done as much for deliciousness as for an experiment, and the flavours all work really well together. It's an incredibly girly treat which should probably be enjoyed after a herbal bath, while sipping bubbly and listening to Enya. If you need an excuse, I'm sure you can invent one.

Like all expats, I'm relying here in Rotterdam on regular food parcels from the motherland. You know, those obscure but vital treats that for some reason you just can't get in your new home. And this week, thanks to the literal mother who came to visit, a bonus pack arrived. Whoopee! First to be devoured was this much-loved minty choco bar which so reminds me of home - modelled here by my lovely and rather enthusiastic sister.

This is a great little treat from Plamil, who make all manner of 'healthy' vegan chocolates. I must confess some pre-existing bias here, as they got me hooked long ago on their seemingly endless range of vegan goodies. Check their website and you'll see they make everything from chocolate spread to mayonnaise - all 100% Kevin Keegan, of course.

So this modest little bar, weighing in at 45g, is towards the 'basic' end of the range. In the same 45g series there are much fancier flavoured versions - you know, encrusted with little bits of exotic substances, etc. Must check those out for next time. But this little fella is simply a small and affordable plain choco bar flavoured with mint oil, and cane sugar free. Like all of Plamil's snacks, the wrapping is covered in cheerful symbols telling you that they are against GM, make the chocolate in a nut-free factory, never use animal products, and have won various awards. Reassuring stuff. And if you were in any doubt, there is also a smiley face with a note that this is "made for chocolate lovers who wish to avoid added sugar, including vegetarians and vegans." This last is the winner for me, as it's proved somewhat tricky to stay off the sugar in Nederland despite the surprisingly wide array of vegan chocolates about. Xylitol may be a bit of a strange choice of sweetner - you know, the one that's laxative if you eat too much - but this stuff is so rich you wouldn't need to eat more than the one bar to be very happy indeed. Good thing too, as it'll be a few weeks before I can get to the UK for some replacements!

A little tip: this chocolate is amazing when dipped in peppermint tea. Let it melt & lick it off. Your friends will laugh at you, but it's the perfect way to enjoy the minty flavour and make it last longer. Lovely!

All round a simple, unpretentious and inexpensive snack - pretty rare in the vegan chocolate world it seems. And of course, it's delicious to boot. This isn't your fancy truffle-box "wow your romantic date" material, but it does what it says on the tin and very well too. The first one I've reviewed to get 5/5, and a big sugar-free thumbs up!

I know, I know, what is it with the green tea flavoured chocolate, I hear you ask? Well, I can assure you that this one is pure coincidence, as it was an Easter gift from my mum (thanks, Mummy!). So, to extend my range of reviews of chocolate flavoured with green tea and (insert random fruit here), this time it's a lemony one.

 

When my family descended on Rotterdam for the weekend, they of course wanted to see all the sights. And I must say that it felt very appropriate munching this strange flavoured choco while wandering round the insane architectural highlights - especially Piet Blom's Cube Houses, which I went inside for the first time. There seems to be some underlying logic shared between that particular architectural statement and this chocolate. A kind of, what the hell, let's try it! attitude, and a love of surreal juxtapositions.

 

First off, I'll admit that this one started out with an advantage as I fondly associate OmBar with delicious treats from obscure independent health food shops that I've discovered on holiday. While the enthusiastic intro they give on their website doesn't sound promising - "On our vibrant living quest we dabbled in all sorts of health-promoting techniques from juice-fasting to colonics" - they actually do a rather good line in scrumptious choco that you can persuade yourself is somehow healthy.

 

Of course, they make a big deal of it being raw, and an even bigger deal of their amazing "coconut sugar". ("At the centre of it all is the belief that chocolate is a superfood, not a junkfood.") They actually devote the entire inside of the paper wrapping to raving about how coconut sugar is better than agave. It's raw, low-GI, and filled with probiotics. These people really are serious. On their website you'll see their new range of "superfood" chocolate, for people who somehow think being vegan isn't healthy enough on its own. Luckily for us, they also care about making the stuff taste good, and I have a hunch that this superfood business is just to appease the yuppies.

 

So what of this little oddity of a chocolate bar, then? The taste is quite intensely citrus, though not just lemony. It reminds me of a legendary chocolate cake one of my housemates once made with citric acid. Or, of the taste of an obscure kind of herbal tea that you would only ever drink in some remote pub because they didn't have anything else that wasn't cider. It has a nice soft texture and breaks into little 'fingers' in a rather pleasing way. Not the kind of thing to eat every day, but a valid stab at making chocolate a bit more interesting. I'm still unconvinced of the wisdom of combining chocolate with green tea, but it must be what the trendy kids are doing these days. It's probably gone viral on FaceTube or something. And if you're one of those cardigan-clad hipsters, then I guess this is for you.

It feels a bit wrong to be tweeting about the Unlike Us conference - a 3-day affair this year in Amsterdam, where geeks, artists and academics get together to hate on Facebook, Twitter et al. So, I thought I'd do a chocolate review instead. This won't be my most enlightening offering, as I was rather hungover when sampling this one and a bit too overwhelmed with the world generally to keep up my usual rigourous reviewing standards.

 

On the first day, a few of us from the Networked Media deparment at Piet Zwart Institute had presented projects we'd been working on that related in some way to social networks. But today, I was sat in the naughty kids' row at the back. I was hanging with Ciderpunx (who kindly held the pictured chocolate melting in his hand for the photo) and a few other lovely folks who I got to meet in the flesh at last, after helping out on the interwebs with the Tech Tools for Activism project. So we were laying low on our laptops with all the other black hoodies, probably looking terribly studious and giving the impression of writing the code for the next big decentralised social network-to-end-all-decentralised-social-networks. Or something.

 

We'd been staying the night before with some generous people who were helping us get to know the local area, including a guided tasting tour of all the organic beers on offer in the Budapest bar. So. What I really needed at this point was a nice lie down, a square meal and/or some herbal tea. Instead, I found myself listening to a terrifying talk about advertisement targeting, while fighting with Drupal and munching absent-mindedly on the closest thing to hand - ie, this rather bizarre Green Tea & Mango chocolate. And of course the surreal environment of the venue Trouw, with its concrete walls and glowing purple lights, only heightened the strangeness of the whole experience.

 

With the above as a disclaimer, I will say that this is a very unusual tasting experience. It's 70% cocoa, bitter as hell dark chocolate, studded with what I can only describe as very fine crystalline granules of strange mango/green tea flavour. Hats off to the makers - it's 100% organic, no made-up E-numbers here. It really is made with green tea and mango, rather fetchingly illustrated on the packet with an impressionistic still life. I have to admit, I didn't realize it had green tea in it when I bought it (the still life was a little too impressionistic), so this came as a bit of a surprise to my addled brain. Somehow eating this completed the general feeling of confusion on that day, being both very bitter and tooth-achingly sugary.

 

I would say this is gourmet chocolate; for the type of people who approach food in the same way Steve Reich fans approach music. If your primary criterion is "interesting", you'll probably like this. I have no idea whether it's any good or not, as at the time I was eating it I really should have been eating a real mango instead. So, I shall give this one the benefit of the doubt and say 3 out of 5. Just don't "like" it on Facebook, whatever you do.