I bought my Mum a couple of presents from the Viva! Campaign Shop for her birthday. If you haven’t heard of Viva! they are a vegan campaign group who expose animal cruelty by secretly filming inside organisations and campaigning against animal exploitation. As I had paid for postage and packaging on my Mum’s gifts I thought I would make the most of it and buy some chocolate I’d been hearing about and hadn’t come across in my local haunts.

I bought the Vivani crispy cornflakes and strawberry wafer crunch bars, the IChoc (who are owned by the same company as Vivani) white nougat crisp bar and the Coco Caravan chai caramel bar.

I also picked up another two IChoc bars, the milkless and choco cookie and a packet of Vegolino from the same people who brought you the Vego Bar when I visited the Black Cat Cafe which you can read all about here.

Starting with corn flake bar – I found this really crunchy and it reminded me of the corn flake cakes we used to make when I was little. I think the corn flake pieces could have been a little bigger though. The chocolate didn’t have a rich cocoa taste at first but this developed more as I worked my way through the bar!

I misread the German on the strawberry bar and thought “waffel” was waffle rather than wafer. The wafer pieces again give a nice crunch but I think they could have been a little bigger. This bar is very sweet and has a strong strawberry flavour. I think this bar is quite original and I can’t think of any non-vegan offering that is similar.

I have tried the Vivani small bar of the white nougat crisp and the larger bar doesn’t disappoint. I’m not sure why they use the different branding as I prefer the Vivani packaging and designs. This chocolate is really soft and has a lovely hazelnutty flavour, this is definitely one of my favourites and again I don’t think there is an equivalent in the non-vegan market.

The chai caramel bar is raw dark chocolate flavoured with spices filled with a raw caramel. When I saw this bar online I assumed it was the caramel that was chai flavoured rather than the chocolate. The chocolate is dark and rich and I think the intense cocoa flavour distracts from the spices, I think this would have worked better with a milder chocolate, equally I think the caramel flavour gets a bit lost in this one. Although as the chocolate is so rich I have only been eating one square at a time of this so still have some left!

The milkless and the choco cookie have a similar appearance the corn flake bar so I haven’t taken extra pictures. The milkless is a mild, creamy chocolate that doesn’t have the aftertaste of some other dairy-free alternatives. I prefer richer chocolate or something a bit different so I think I’d choose one of the other Vivani/IChoc bars over this one. The choco cookie has cookie pieces, similar to the biscuits/cookies of an oreo contained inside and they give this bar an added depth of flavour. I know there are cookie chocolate bars in the non-vegan market but I think most of these have come on the scene since I went vegan so it’s nice to have an animal friendly alternative!

Finally we have the Vegolino mini bars. These are from the same makers the Vego Bar which many hail as the best vegan chocolate on the planet! If you are unaware the Vego Bar is a big chunky dairy-free milk chocolate and hazelnut bar. These Vegolino’s are the Vego Bar’s more elegant cousins. They are small individually wrapped bars of praline gianduja and are best eaten straight from the fridge, especially in the weather we’ve had over the last week! I would describe these as tasting like the praline filling from a Guylian Seashell chocolate, they are beautiful and moreish and my only criticism would be I think they would benefit from a crisp layer of chocolate over the top. Anyone craving a Ferrero Rocher fix wouldn’t go wrong grabbing a bag of these!

Have you tried any of these chocolates? What did you think? What is your favourite dairy-free chocolate? Let me know!

Plumes x