chocolate – Vegans.UK

Pacari chocolate (II)

November 27, 2017 by Tofu Temptress Leave a Comment

Pacari chocolate is one of those indulgences you can enjoy totally guilt free. It’s vegan (of course) and it doesn’t contain palm oil. The cocoa is ethically sourced as they work closely with local communities and, as I’ll describe, their products are perfect for ‘mindful’ consumption.

Pacari is not cheap, nor should it be. I was lucky enough to receive complimentary items to try, but I know they’re of the highest quality. Now, onto mindfulness.

The first item I tried was the Chocolate Covered Cacao Beans. These crunchy beans were relatively mild in flavour, although they had banana in them, plus a generous dusting of cacao powder. With lots of chocolate, one finds oneself gorging and perhaps feeling regretful. With these however, the substance and complexity of texture left you satisfied after only a couple of beans. This is great news for someone like me, who feels a meal is never really complete without something sweet to finish. Eating them slowly and mindfully felt like the right thing to do somehow.

I also received drinking cacao with ginger. Now, I felt the ginger was fairly subtle (I consumed it as a drink, but of course you can use it in all sorts of ways.) However, my other tasting guinea pig felt the ginger was too much – each to their own. I heated up some oat milk in a pan and adding this made it into a very tasty hot chocolate.

I’m no barista, but if you are, I’m sure you could make this into all sorts of wonderful delights. My only criticism would be the inner packet is quite tightly packed, so you’d be better decanting the cacao into a tin or something to save it from spilling everywhere. Happily the availability of vegan marshmallows these days means you could enjoy an even more indulgent winter drink.

More treats were to come. This time I wasn’t quite so restrained. Three packets of chocolate covered berries, banana and then espresso beans were next on the list. I must admit to finding them all rather more-ish. The golden berries were pleasantly tart which made for a lovely contrast to the smooth chocolate that covered them. I popped them into an egg cup (what else should a vegan do with such an item?) and did my best to be restrained.

Another day I tried the tiny balls of delight that were the banana pieces. These had an unexpectedly strong banana taste, which again went well with the dark chocolate. Out came the egg cup once more and, like the berries, they probably lasted us two tasting sessions.

Lastly were the chocolate covered espresso beans which were strong in both taste and texture. Although I know it’s not everyone’s thing, I love coffee flavoured chocolate. This was not the somewhat manufactured coffee taste of chocolate you might be used to though, but much more real. For me, this would be preferable to having an actual coffee after dinner.

The last item we tried was the organic chocolate bar with ginger and chia. The flavours that Pacari produces always seem so well thought out and this was no exception. It managed to be refreshing and again, this is a chocolate bar that you could (with some self control) enjoy mindfully. The aroma was lovely and no one flavour was overpowering. They melded together into a really lovely chocolate experience.

If you’re into chocolate but feel that you eat too much of it, perhaps the price and distinctive flavours of these products are just the thing to moderate your consumption and enhance your experience. Chocolate is supposed to be a treat, and tasting these yummy items certainly was.

Pacari Chocolate

August 27, 2017 by Tofu Temptress Leave a Comment

Free chocolat package - yay! — Free chocolat package – yay!

So recently I was lucky enough to receive some chocolate from Pacari chocolate to review. I tell you what; it’s a tough life running a vegan website at times. The company had written to me asking if I’d like to try some and, not being an idiot, I said yes. I generally really like dark chocolate and was excited to receive my free samples.

All their chocolate is organic and they seem really involved with the growers in Ecuador. They pride themselves on this, and their environmental ethics, so altogether Pacari seems like a pretty socially responsible company, which was music to my ears.

They have a wide range of products including chocolate bars (of course!) drinking cacao and chocolate covered fruits and cacao beans. It all sounds pretty yummy, but of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating. They’ve won lots of awards, including for their raw bars, so my expectations were quite high.

I was sent three different flavours of chocolate: a ten gram bar of 70% cacao raw organic chocolate; a ten gram bar of coffee organic chocolate and finally a full sized fifty gram bar of organic chocolate with Andean Blueberry. Yum! I couldn’t wait to get stuck in.

Now, many people don’t like dark chocolate because they feel it’s too bitter. I can understand that, even though I don’t agree. However, when I tasted the 70% cacao bar, expecting at least some bitterness, there was none. It was incredibly smooth in flavour and without wanting to seem corny, was kind of the dark chocolate I’d been waiting for all my life! I would really like some of my friends to try it to see whether it’d convert them to dark chocolate.

I’m also aware that many people aren’t keen on coffee in their chocolate. I’m not sure why, but again, I’d defy them to turn their nose up at the coffee in the second bar I tried. It was unmistakably real coffee, but somehow subtler and more genuine than that you’d get in say, a box of chocolates. The pleasantly grainy texture really rounded it out and I’ll be honest, I was sad when it was gone.

Chocolate infused with sweet blueberries

Lastly it was the turn of the Andean Blueberry chocolate. I love blueberries and know they go well with chocolate, so figured this one couldn’t fail. I was right! The smooth chocolate was infused with really lovely sweet, tiny, almost chewy blueberry bits. It’s the kind of chocolate that is a pleasure to savour.

I really love the outlook of Pacari and their packaging is tempting and high quality. They’re not the cheapest on the market, nor would I expect them to be, but I’d say they’re definitely worth trying, if only for a treat. They’re stocked in various independent shops (see list here) or you can purchase from their website here.

Happy Herbivore Light and Lean by Lindsay S. Nixon

July 25, 2016 by Tofu Temptress Leave a Comment

The Happy Herbivore website has long been a great source of recipes and the cookbook of the same name was a best seller. This book, as the title suggests, is geared towards those of us who’d like to lose a bit of weight. There are all kinds of recipes in here and one thing they all have in common is the ingredients lists are pretty short. I find that a huge advantage, especially when trying to throw something together quickly. Although an American book, most ingredients are easy to come by here in the UK and cup measurers are available in all the big supermarkets, so that shouldn’t be a problem either.

As well as recipes, this book also includes a small section at the back that’s devoted to exercise. I have to be honest that this isn’t why I bought the book but there are common sense moves in there for everyone, like the plank and squats. However, I defy anyone to do more than five burpees in a row without getting seriously grumpy. Pick and choose what suits and you could end up more toned than you were before.

Ok, onto the food. Now, there are a few dishes in here that have made it onto my RRR (regular recipe rotation). My favourite of these is probably the Skinny Mac ‘n’ cheese. It uses canned pumpkin and you can make the sauce and then sub in whatever vegetables you want. It’s all totally flexible and tastes really quite indulgent despite the lack of fat and calories.

Skinny Mac'n'cheese — Skinny Mac’n’cheese

Another regular of mine is the Meatloaf Bites. They’re little burger-type things that you can do in a muffin tray and are ideal for stuffing into a wrap or having hot with veg. It calls for Italian seasoning, and I find a combination of dried basil, oregano, rosemary and sage works a treat. It also gives me an excuse to make proper use of my spice rack.

The Ruby Chocolate Muffins are a great little cake to make, if you fancy something sweet but healthy. The rubies are cranberries which look attractive and taste great.

There are lots of innovative recipes in here, not least the Chocolate Surprise Frosting which has sweet potato as its main ingredient – I kid you not! I honestly used this on the chocolate cake recipe from this book, served it to friends without telling them and they yummed it up. They truly had no idea they were eating vegetables! One for the children maybe?

This book is great for lunch ideas, light meals of all kinds from pasta to burgers to pancakes, desserts and there’s even a section on drinks. There are also loads of useful little recipes for sauces and dips that can be used in all different ways to make mealtimes tasty but healthier. The author has even included her own personal story to help inspire you and she certainly seems to be thriving on this no oil, whole food, plant based diet.

Recommended.

Buy it here.

Melting Moments

October 27, 2015 by Tofu Temptress 3 Comments

This is, hands down, the most indulgent thing I make. I mean, the sugar content is pretty much off the scale. However, if you’re looking to have an incredibly rich, biscuit-y, crumbly, crunchy treat that oozes smooth sweet filling as you bite into it, this may just be the recipe for you. You don’t have to put chocolate butter icing in the middle though (as I have). This recipe works just as well with any flavour of butter icing, or if you prefer, a thick jam will do the job nicely. Happy baking!

Ingredients

Cream the marg with icing sugar to start

200g vegan margarine

125g icing sugar

155g plain, white flour

85g cornflour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

For the filling:

100g vegan margarine

320g icing sugar

2 tablespoons cocoa

Some warm water, just in case

Here’s how I do it

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees or gas mark 4.

Cream the margarine and icing sugar together until they’re light and fluffy.

Sift in the flour, cornflour and baking powder and mix well. Now, as you’re mixing, it may begin to look a bit like crumbs, but that’s ok. It should eventually come together to form a dough, so keep going till it does. There’ll be a few crumby bits at the bottom of the bowl but not to worry.

Roll the dough into balls with your hands

Divide your dough evenly into 16 balls. I do this by roughly halving the dough in the bowl, then halving again so you have four blobs. Out of each of the blobs, make four balls by rolling the dough between your hands and placing on a baking tray that’s been sprayed with a bit of oil.

Once you’ve got your sixteen balls, gently flatten them off with a fork. Remember, the biscuits will spread and swell a bit while baking, so space them out with at least a couple of finger-widths between them.

Pop them in the oven to bake for 20 minutes.

Give them a minute or two out of the oven and then transfer them to a cooling rack.

Make the icing while the biscuits are cooling

(Start to make the icing and then they should be cool enough to sandwich together once you’ve done that.)

The amounts I’ve given should give you plenty of icing, so feel free to make a half to three quarters of the recipe if you don’t want to go mad.

Cream the margarine and sugar together and then gradually add icing sugar. Pop the cocoa in at this point to if you’re using it. The icing should slowly come together as your beating it, but if it really is too stiff after a while, add half a tablespoon of warm water at a time until you get the consistency you want.

Make sure your icing is the right consistency

Be warned, icing can get too runny very quickly, so if this should happen, just pop a bit more icing sugar in to firm it up again. Beat the icing until there are no lumps and it is stiff enough to sandwich the biscuits together.

Sort your biscuits into eight lots of two, trying to match similar sizes. With the best will in the world, they will not all be perfectly uniform in size, so just do your best.

Take the flatter one of each pair and put a generous dollop of icing (or jam, whatever you’re using) onto it, placing the other as a lid on top.

Repeat until you have eight melting moments.

Melt into the moment... — Melt into the moment…

Have a sit down as you’re going to have the mother of all sugar rushes…

Vegan Easter Eggs

April 2, 2015 by Tofu Temptress 3 Comments

If you go to the supermarket today you’ll see aisles full of Easter eggs and those Easter eggs will be choc (ha!) full of milk. Even many of the lesser-spotted dark chocolate mainstream eggs contain milk. Some don’t (for example the delectable Green and Black’s Organic Dark Chocolate Egg) but mostly you’ll be looking in the ‘free from’ section for cruelty free Easter treats.

So, I thought I’d make a huge sacrifice and test some of them for you. I know, selfless. I didn’t test a lot as: a) My jeans are tight enough already and, b) Happily, there are now a huge variety, with practically every major retailer in the UK catering to the lactose intolerant and of course vegans, so really, too many to sample.

The first lot I tried were from the superb online retailer Vegan Town. The mini eggs came in three truffle filled varieties: strawberry flavour (gold wrapper) coffee flavour (brown wrapper) or nougat flavour (pink wrapper) and I must say all were yummy. They were the perfect size for an Easter egg hunt and you can buy them in a bundle as I did or in separate bags of one flavour.

Next, the company Choices has a variety of dairy free treats that are available all year round at plenty of supermarkets. I tried their white chocolate bunny, which is just as I remember white chocolate to be (although I must admit it’s been a while) – very sweet with a close texture that crumbles nicely as you eat it.

The second of their products I tried was their caramel flavoured Easter Egg, which came with three chocolate discs. It was nice, but some of the chocolate in the main egg was a bit thin and the flavour was perhaps an acquired taste. It did a good job of imitating milk chocolate though and those shortcomings didn’t stop me munching my way through it, and it was great for something different.

My favourite was probably Moo Free’s Orange Easter egg. The chocolate was nice and thick and the orange crystal bits through it (a bit like Matchmakers) were absolutely scrummy. It is a darker chocolate, but not so dark it’s bitter, so I think would appeal to milk chocolate fans too. It definitely disappeared the quickest and I was sorely tempted to go out and buy another one. Definitely a great egg to convert non-vegans!

The holy grail of Easter treats is of course the Cream Egg. There’s been a bit of controversy recently about the quality of the mainstream egg, not that you’d want to eat dairy stuff anyway. So, hurray for Considerit Chocolate who have produced a vegan cream egg. Yes, you read that correctly, a Vegan Cream Egg. It goes without saying that when my local vegetarian deli got them in stock yesterday, I hot-footed it down there and bagged one. Screw the expense, I had to try it. The chocolate was darker than you’d have with the conventional one, but the filling was perfect and all in all I was not disappointed. They are so popular though, I’d get in there if I were you, before they all disappear.

If you do miss out on those, remember, a dairy free Easter egg is only as far as your local supermarket because everyone from Sainsbury’s, to Holland and Barrett seem to have their own brands and the free from section will have everything from dark, ‘milk’, or white chocolate vegan eggs for you to choose from. So have a happy Easter and treat yourself!

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