Two styles of vegan chocolate - Gnaw & Happi (@NLi10)

 Dark chocolate is good for you - lots of people recommend a little a day to do all kinds of magical things.  Me?  I just enjoy dark chocolate!  And vegan chocolate is by definition dark chocolate right - well - not anymore, you can add other milky things like oats to the mix to make it more accessible to the regular chocolate eater.

So - here we have two versions - one gifted by my mom (Gnaw Dark Chocolate) and one picked up by me from Red Brick market in Birmingham (specifically The Peddling Pantry).

First up Vegan-dark GNAW

We've had this a while - I don't like to open things until I'm ready to review and eat, and we've had a lot of choc recently.

Seems pretty good. £2.99 for 100g isn't cheap but it's fairly standard.  Palm Oil free is a big tick - and it's fully compostable.  

Looks ace! Putting shiny things in the compost heap always feels odd - but at least this will biodegrade in landfill and not leave plastics behind.

And it's certainly a dark chocolate - not too aggressive (my partner enjoyed it and she dislikes the 90% dark style things).  The flavour is strong, and the texture has some welcome grain to it - a pleasure to melt on the tongue.  I don't think you'll accidentally eat a whole bar without realising though - it's still dark choc after all!

The side effects of being Vegan are negligible. No wacky aftertaste or odd melt pattern (NoMo flashbacks!)

So how about the Happi?  This one feels a lot more like a real Vegan work - with all it's credentials on display.  It's also a little more expensive at £1.85 for 40g although I think they did sell 100g for a similar price to the Gnaw (but like I said - I have heaps of chocolate to get through!)

Oat milk has a tendency to disappoint me as it's not my favourite in tea, and not as good as almond is with cereal.  Slave free chocolate - with fully compostable inner (and recyclable box) certainly makes me happy.  While we can now recycle pet food pouches we really don't generate much packaging waste in our house and it feels great!

Inside is less spectacular though - this one doesn't feel like a present.  That said - cracking open the plant based wrapper unleashes the orange and all is forgiven.   This one is smooooooth and while a little darker than your typical high street bar it's very snackable.  I've accidentally eaten twice as much of this as the Gnaw bar while reviewing...

This is the future of vegan chocolate then.  Sustainable - cow free - slave free - and with none of those old school vegan issues with the texture and aftertaste.

I fully expect to get more of these when I pop into the market again (maybe today if it's still open!) as they have a much milkier version to risk...