Easter eggs 2021: Vegan chocolate is gaining popularity – but it’s still got a little way to go

From inews.co.uk

In 2019, Galaxy became one of the first large-scale confectioners to use hazelnut milk to create a creamy mouthful and a smooth texture without relying on cows

Size used to be the thing that mattered when it came to Easter eggs, as well as quantity. I think it’s safe to say that minimum cacao percentage, sugar content and milk solids didn’t trouble those of us who spent Easter Sunday in a chocolate-induced frenzy.

But tastes in chocolate are evolving. While eight in 10 Britons still favour milk chocolate, they now look for bars with a higher amount of cacao. “There’s a halo around darker chocolate,” says food brand and consumer expert Tessa Stuart. “There’s a continued shopper willingness to buy more premium products and people are trading up.

“It isn’t exclusively dark chocolate, but milk chocolate with a higher percentage of cacao. Green & Blacks had a lot to do with people getting into hybrid-style bars.” White chocolate, meanwhile, has been having a terrible time – earlier this month the Office for National Statistics updated its inflation shopping basket by removing the Milky Bar.

It’s not just quality that the exacting chocolate shopper is looking for – there is increased interest in non-dairy options, with the market for vegan chocolate has been growing steadily in the past decade. It has moved, the market research firm Mintel reported recently, from “the margins to the mainstream”. And traditional vegan chocolate – made from dark chocolate, a blend of cocoa mass and sugar is being left in the dust of the health-food store as brands realise that as well as being ethical, their plant-based chocolate needs to be aspirational and delicious.

In 2019, Galaxy became one of the first large-scale confectioners to use hazelnut milk to create a creamy mouthful and a smooth texture without relying on cows. High-street chocolatier Hotel Chocolat also blends its chocolate with hazelnut milk to give vegans a plant-based option. “Sales keep rising,” a spokeswoman tells i. “Every time we release a vegan box, we sell out within weeks.”

James Cadbury, the great-great-great-grandson of the man himself, John Cadbury, who started manufacturing chocolate in 1831, is well aware of the trend, and launched his new H!P chocolate last month, at £3 per bar.

But instead of hazelnuts or rice – the latter is used by Nomo, which describes itself as purveyors of “creamy free-from” chocolate and sells “hazelnot crunch” bars and “fruit and crunch”, a riff on more famous treats long found in sweet shops – Cadbury uses oat milk, by far the most popular dairy alternative today. It’s tricky to find other makers that do.

Cadbury tells i: “There’s a huge demand for plant-based milk chocolate. Milk chocolate is still the most popular, but more people are cutting out dairy and looking for more premium bars.

“There was nothing really on the market that was good enough. I find the flavour of rice in chocolate overpowering. And there’s a reason oat milk brands such as Oatly are doing so well – it’s the creamiest type. We only launched last month and we’ve sold 60,000 bars so far. ”

Will Cadbury replace his forebears as the number one?

“When I think of Cadbury, I think of its origins, when it was recommended by medical experts. It was a high-quality product. Now it’s more of a commodity. I want to give consumers another option. We’re positioned a little above that. We’re never going to compete with those guys”.

The luxury chocolate maker Paul A Young, who has shops in London  and has been crafting truffles and other delights since 2006, is ambivalent when it comes to vegan substitutes, but concedes that nut-milk chocolate might make its way into his shops one day: “We already have 55 products that are vegan  –they’re dark chocolate.

“I’ve tried a lot of nut-milk chocolate. They don’t taste the same and the texture is off. But people are starting to ask. It isn’t enough yet to develop a whole line, but we might move into that eventually.

“There’s space for everything, though. We’ve struggled to sell white chocolate for years, but I think that will make a comeback.”

Vegan chocolate egg taste test

H!P Oatmilk egg £12

H!P chocolate is made with oat milk (Photo: H!P)

This is made from Colombian chocolate blended with oat milk. As far as the chocolate goes, I thought it was pretty good – delicate and rich. But is it as good as traditional varieties? For me, the classic milk chocolate egg is too good to be bettered. This is not nearly as perfect as a bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk. Oat milk chocolate has an odd, grainy aftertaste. I’m not a vegan, but if I ever decide to go fully plant-based, I’d be happy to turn to H!P for chocolate goodies at Easter and beyond.

M&S Eggplant egg, £6

The M&S EggPlant Egg (Photo: M&S)

An Easter egg in the shape of a rather more modern symbol of fertility. It wasn’t unpleasant, but I look for creaminess and a luscious texture in an egg, and find the obsession with dark, one-dimensional chocolate a bit baffling. What was welcome was a short ingredients list – only cacao and sugar and a little vanilla. Fans of basic dark chocolate – whether vegan or not – will like this egg, I reckon. But I was left unfulfilled and unsatisfied, which is presumably not the intention of an Easter egg, not least one shaped in such a way.

Moo Free Vegan egg £3-£4

I bought this Moo Free egg for less than £4 in Waitrose and I’m glad I didn’t spend any more on it because it’s revolting. Here was a grainy, sugary, claggy egg that left an odd taste in my mouth. It tastes like chocolate that doesn’t want to be eaten – imagine that, one that you can have a nibble of and not want to return to. Something very wrong there. I can’t put my finger on the flavour profile exactly because there isn’t one. It’s just sugar, basically. Unglamorous and cloying.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/food-and-drink/easter-eggs-2021-vegan-chocolate-gaining-popularity-way-to-go-937756