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Homemade vegan creme eggs: Can it be done?  »

Liza Eckert attempts to make vegan creme eggs chez elle for Persephone, with mixed results. Mainly because her electric mixer gave out before the ingredients of the creamy centers were fully combined, and then she ran into trouble with apportioning the chocolate shells … but, she says, “Nothing, not even weird consistency or uneven chocolate, will stand between me and my creme eggs.”

Have any of you attempted to make creme eggs? I loved the Cadbury’s original more than life itself as a kid, and had an excellent grown-up version at Timeless the other week—creamier centers with a sort of lemony finish to the vanilla, offset by darker chocolate—but I’ve never felt inclined to do them myself. There’s a recipe on VegWeb, though, for the brave!

[photo by Liza Eckert for Persephone Magazine]

Go Max Go debuts vegan Butterfingers!  »

The rumors are true: Go Max Go has added a new candy bar to its vegan line! The bar is called Thumbs Up and it’s a vegan version of a Butterfinger. I love Butterfingers, so Go Max Go sent me a free bar to try. Now I will tell you all about it.

Official opinion: AMAZING! Like, so good. I can’t remember exactly what Butterfingers taste like, but to my best recollection, these are an excellent approximation. They are crispy and best of all, peanut-buttery. As soon as I bit in I was like, “hot damn!” I’ve had a few vegan Butterfinger-type things in the past and they were all great, but they were generally a harder consistency than the real thing. Very toffee-like. These are different; they’re much lighter, which I think the real bar is like. Kind of like half-toffee, half-peanut butter wafer. 

If you want to get your own Thumbs Up, Go Max Go tells me the bars are going to hit stores this month! They should be showing up in online vegan stores first, so keep an eye out. I for one can’t wait!

Product review: Yummi Bears vitamins are perfect for kids, and the kid in you!  »

UPDATE!!!: Turns out, these are NOT vegan. They contain lanolin. However the company says that  Yummi Bears Organics Immunity and Yummi Bears Organics Brain Health are both vegan.

When you’re a queer vegan like me, you learn to improvise in situations where inequality is at play. No same-sex marriage in your state? Road trip with your pleather biker fiancé to Northhampton! No vegan gummy vitamins on the market? Squash one of your regular vegan multivitamins and one of those wacky German vegan gummy animals together and chew it down before you taste anything horrible (like the part that isn’t gummy bear)!

The thing is though, times are changing. Rainbow marriage is on the horizon (you heard it here first, folks!) and finally, vegans have an awesome gummy multivitamin to call our very own. Hurray! Yummi Bears Organics Multi-Vitamin is completely vegan, as well as free from allergens, gluten, casein, gelatin, and GMOs, and all natural and organic. Yummi Bears make four varieties of vegan organic vitamins: a multivitamin with 16 essential vitamins and minerals; a Brain Health vitamin with DHA and B-complex; an Immunity Health with rose hips and astragalus (I LOVE ASTRAGALUS); and a Bone Health vitamin to give kids healthy bones, teeth, and gums (you know, when they’re not messing up their dental work with gummy bears).

The company sent me free samples of the Multi-Vitamin and Bone Health. How do they taste? AMAZING. They really taste like candy. Because, you know, they are candy. I felt insta-fortified after trying three of each (that’s the serving size according to the package, don’t hate!) and I know you/your kids would, too.

I really love taking vitamins, and I’m passionate about vitamin accessibility in the vegan community. I once considered living in a co-op near Lake Merritt but decided not to because it didn’t sit right with me that they had a communal condom drawer but didn’t share vitamins. I mean, I get that, but c’mon. Choosing safer household sex over safer household B-12 blood levels? They didn’t have their priorities straight. That’s why I moved to Philadelphia, where people share cigarettes and horror stories about traffic to the Jersey Shore. And now I have these amazing gummy vitamins to share—so far I’ve brought some to a young queer Jews of Philadelphia National Coming Out Day party, and I can confirm that I made exactly 3.5 friends while passing out gummy bears over by the hummus (that’s always where you’ll find me!). A great victory for supplementation proliferation and my heeb social life. Yay!

Get Yummi Bears Organics at Rainbow, Whole Foods, and other health food stores, or online.

This is Vegansaurus raw correspondent Sarah E. Brown’s latest post! Read more by Sarah on Vegansaurus, and visit her personal blog, Queer Vegan Food.

Product Review: Coracao raw vegan chocolate! G’damn!  »

The first time I saw Coracao at the Saturday Berkeley Farmers’ Market, just a few blocks from where I was living at the time, my heart melted into a puddle of love. Peeking from behind the brown and pink awning was Daniel, a handsome fellow with bright skin and a sparkle in his dreamy eyes. “Would you like to try some raw chocolate?” he asked, as if that were a question. From the first piece, I knew this was some of the best raw chocolate I had ever had. No, the best chocolate I had ever had, period.

Coracao sources the finest ingredients—ethically sourced chocolate (they make Food Empowerment Project’s list!) that is sweetened with lower-glycemic coconut palm sugar and prepared with the finest raw ingredients. Coracao is so passionate about their ingredients, that they put together an entire snazzy 12-page PDF explaining the various health benefits of antioxidant-rich chocolate, and what goes into making the perfect batch of Coracao treats. One of my favorite parts about this informative PDF, which teaches all about superfoods, is this info:

Our pure chocolates NEVER contain these “common chocolate” ingredients: Milk, hydrolysed milk protein, skimmed milk powder, lactose, de-mineralized whey powder, butter, cream, wheat or gluten, hydrogenated fats, corn syrup, soy lecithin, vanillin (artificial vanilla flavoring), refined sugar, sodium chloride (bleached, refined and de-mineralized salt), sulfur dioxide (preservative), Potassium Metabisulphite (preservative), FD&C Yellow no. 6 *E10, FD&C Yellow no. 5 *E102, FD&C Red no. 3 *E127, FD&C Red no. 40 *E129, FD&C green no. 3 *E143, FD&C Blue no. 1 *E133, FD&C Blue no. 2 *E132 (artificial food colorings), polyglycerol polyricinoleate or PGPR, ammonium phosphatide or YN, mono-diglycerides or sorbitan tri stearates (stabilizers).

I had no clue that lots of chocolate contains these things! I guess I live in a bit of a raw vegan bubble. I commend Coracao for taking such steps to inform the public about the crap being passed off as chocolate ingredients. Ammonium phosphatide? Whose colon deserves that? I mean, really.

Coracao makes several different confections, all of which contain ”superfoods” that have been linked to various health/taste benefits. Here’s a sampling of what they sell at the Farmers’ Markets throughout the Bay: Almond coconut dream, live almond heart [Ed.: Creepy name! But I like! I think!], caramel cup, macadamia coconut cream, kaffir lime caramel cup, raspberry fudge truffle, superberry cup, matcha fudge truffle, and more!

I have tried the Blondie Bar, a coconut macaroon bar with the edge dipped in chocolate, which contains lucuma, one of my favorite butterscotch-flavored superfoods. This tastes like pure chocolate chip cookie dough mixed with coconut. It is one of their most popular items for good reason! Coracao’s other specialties are their filled chocolate bars. These contain superfood fillings including caramel, kaffir lime-infused caramel, and Rawmond Butter. The Rawmond Butter is like a peanut butter cup but SO much better—it will absolutely blow you away, seriously!

Coracao’s uniquely decadent indulgences can be found online, at various Cafe Gratitude locations, Farmers’ Markets, Whole Foods, and health food stores around the Bay Area. Check their website to see where they sell their delights near you!

[Photos courtesy Coracao. Samples were provided via the kind folks at Coracao, but that doesn’t guarantee a review or anything because we’re hella legit and only write about shit we love.]

This is Vegansaurus raw correspondent Sarah E. Brown’s latest post! Read more by Sarah on Vegansaurus, and visit her personal blog, Queer Vegan Food.