Living your best vegan life at Easter can be, let’s say, a challenge. When Easters of yore have included one Cadbury’s Crème Egg daily for a month, scoffing hot buttered hot cross buns without inspecting the ingredients list first, and gorging on Mini Eggs until you feel sick, March can feel like a tough point in the cruelty-free fan’s calendar. So we’ve taken it upon ourselves to scour the supermarkets to find you some recompense and guess what? There are actually some very tasty things out there this year. We’re happy to see the big retailers are finally sitting up and taking notice of all things vegan, so while we sadly can’t bring you a passable chocolate nest cake (sob) or a Crème Egg alternative (well actually we could, but they were £12 for three, so…) there is still a decent dairyless Easter out there. Here are some of our fave finds.
This is a 55% cocoa dark chocolate egg with some bonus dark chocolate buttons for afters, and we like it. It’s fairly standard in a no-frills way, but good with it. There’s a nice glossy sheen, no funny aftertaste and a decent dark chocolate mouthfeel to it (probably thanks to the soya, which always lends a slight creaminess). You wouldn’t know it was dairy-free and we’d happily scoff this on Easter Sunday, vegan or not. More like this please.
M&S Made Without Dairy Dark Chocolate Egg, £7 for 160g, available at M&S
These lovely Moo Free eggs are popping up in a few places this Easter, and we’re glad because as well as being dairy-free, gluten-free, soya-free and vegan, they’re also organic, which is only ever a good thing. We bagged this one from Aldi, where you’ll also find a yummy honeycomb flavour and a classic chocolate variety. We like the orange best, which you would never know wasn’t ‘normal’ orange milk chocolate but happens to be made from a combination of cocoa, orange, sugar and rice: pure, delicious witchcraft.
Moo Free Organic Cheeky Orange Egg, £3.29 for 110g, available at Aldi
Two things: 1) This tastes 100% like proper Belgian chocolate, and 2) We can’t believe it’s from Asda. This is from their luxury ‘Extra Special’ range and it is seriously good. There are quite a few ingredients involved – soya, rice syrup and coconut oil all feature – but look, it really works. Tiny crunchy pieces of cocoa nibs really make this egg feel special. The vanilla truffles are nice too, but are nothing compared to the egg itself (we’d like more natural vanilla flavour, if we’re being fussy). An incredible bargain for what it is. 10/10 would eat again.
Asda Extra Special Free From Belgian Dark Chocolate Egg with Vanilla Flavoured Truffles, £5 for 200g, available at Asda
Another supermarket egg really pulling out the big guns, this is a Tesco Finest number that you should run out and get this minute because it’s amazing value. The egg is salted caramel flavour and feels really luxurious, thanks to the plentiful flakes of Anglesey sea salt and a nice textural contrast with some crunchy puffed rice. Very good indeed. Again, the truffles don’t feel as special as the actual egg, but of course we still wolfed them down. Well done Tesco: vegans, GF and dairy dodgers rejoice.
Tesco Finest Salted Caramel Flavour Egg with Fondant Truffles, £3 for 120g, available at Tesco
Booja Booja is the gold standard for free-from chocolate and to be perfectly honest, we’d choose them over most milk chocolates, so it was never going to be a surprise that these are utterly delectable. Three perfect chocolate and hazelnut crunch truffles nestle inside a really beautiful, handpainted (in Kashmir) egg, which is sadly not edible. They taste of heaven and we’re embarrassed about how quickly they disappeared; particularly once we saw the price. Organic, gluten-, soya- and dairy-free, these are the real deal and far too nice to give away.
Booja Booja Hazelnut Crunch Chocolate Truffles, £9.99 for 34g, available at Wholefoods and Ocado
Butter, eggs, milk and even honey are pretty integral to the making of a hot cross bun, so to hear that there were some intentionally vegan ones going at Asda was very exciting. Except we couldn’t find them for love nor money; perhaps you’ll have better luck than us. There are also some lovely ones going at Farmdrop, should they serve your area. So we were beside ourselves when we realised the normal Waitrose Essential ones just happened to be #accidentallyvegan. Yep, that’s right. These highly spiced, sticky, fruity little numbers are what we’ll be eating with our afternoon cuppa all the way to Easter Monday and we’re thrilled about it because they taste exactly like a hot cross bun should. Also: what a steal at 75p. If anyone finds something nice to spread on them, do let us know – we’re going for mashed banana in the meantime.
Waitrose Essential Hot Cross Buns, 75p for 4, available at Waitrose
Mini chocolatey novelty treats are one of the joys of Easter, and we’ll be darned if we’re giving them up just because we’ve chosen the righteous path. So these cute little choccy Easter chicks are giving us life right now. Ten solid dairy-free miniature chicks that conveniently also happen to be peanut- and wheat-free yet taste suspiciously like your usual scrummy milk chocolate make us very happy vegans. These use rice milk to give that nice creaminess and there’s soya in there too which, personally, we don’t mind at all.
CocoaLibre Dairy Free Chicks, £3.99 for 100g, available at CocoaLibre
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