Tag: plant based chocolate

NOMO Ultimate Choco Advent Calendar

advent calendar, Children, chocolate, Christmas, Family Life, Gifts for children, Home, Vegan, Vegetarian

Disclaimer – We received this item free for the purpose of this review/feature but all words and opinions are our own.

All kids, whether they can eat dairy, nuts or eggs, will love the NOMO Chocolate Advent Calendar! That’s because NOMO make chocolate with none of those ingredients to create a vegan chocolate that’s also pal oil free and gluten free.  What’s not to like?

The NOMO Advent Calendar is filled with 24 days’ worth of NOMO chocolate drops in Creamy Choc flavour, which to you and me is the equivalent of “milk chocolate’ except as these are dairy-free, there is no milk involved!  The choc drops are each 3.3 grams in weight and have the same soft texture of the milk chocolate you buy in shops.  It’s not gritty either and doesn’t leave an after taste like some Free From chocolates do. There isn’t anything in eating them that makes you think that it’s anything but milk chocolate, so you really don’t feel like you’re missing out.

I particularly like that the NOMO calendars are still giving 24 days’ worth of treats, as advent calendars should, but may manufactures have now gone to just 12 or even 10 days of Christmas treats. Hardly an advent calendar but at least with NOMO you can give this as a gift to children and still maintain the legitimate Christmas Advent Calendar theme.

The NOMO Creamy Choc Drops Advent Calendar is a great gift for adults or children, and even better, it’s really universal so even if you’re not sure if they can or can’t eat an ingredient, NOMO has you covered.

Available from shops and online for £6

NOMO Ultimate Choco Advent Calendar

advent calendar, Children, chocolate, Christmas, Family Life, Gifts for children, Gluten Free, Vegan, Vegetarian

Disclaimer – We received this item free for the purpose of this review/feature but all words and opinions are our own.

You won’t miss out on Christmas advent calendars this year if you don’t or can’t eat chocolate.  The NOMO Ultimate Choco Advent Calendar is dairy free, nut free, gluten free and egg free, plus their chocolate has no palm oil!

This bumper advent calendar measures nearly 40 centimetres tall and includes 24 mini NOMO chocolate bars in flavours Mint, Creamy Choc, Caramel and Orange each of 11.8 grams. On Christmas Eve, there’s also a 38 gram Caramel bar to celebrate Christmas.

All of the NOMO chocolate flavours are gluten free, egg free, nut free and most especially, dairy free. They contain sugar, rice flour and cocoa butter but no palm oil, which also lends the whole chocolate company to being Rainforest Alliance Certified.

The NOMO Ultimate Choco Advent lends itself to adults as well as children, with the variety of flavours and at just £12 for the whole 24-day calendar, it’s a great gift too!

Available from shops and online for £12 at: https://nomochoc.com/products/ultimate-advent-calendar

PLAYin CHOC Christmas Collection Chocolate Toys

Children, chocolate, Christmas, Gifts for children, Gluten Free, Stocking Fillers, Toys, Vegan, Vegetarian

Disclaimer – We received this item free for the purpose of this review/feature but all words and opinions are our own.

Buying gifts at Christmas for other people’s children can be tricky but the PLAYin CHOC makes that much easier! A present that is both chocolate and has a self-assembly element to the toy before children can play with it, there’s the added bonus that the chocolate is plant based. It’s vegan, dairy free, nut free and gluten free, so there’s no reason any child couldn’t receive it!

The PLAYin CHOC Christmas Collection is a suite of 6 boxes which are also sold separately.  Each of the boxes contains a toy to be put together, but they’re easy enough for a child. The toys included in the Christmas collection are a snowman, an elf, Father Christmas, a Gingerbread Man, a reindeer and a Christmas tree along with a fun fact card. Inside each box there are 2x 10 gram pieces of chocolate, individually wrapped. They’re made with no dairy, using coconut sugar and creamed coconut instead. The chocolate flavour is from the cocoa solids and the sweetness is from vanilla pods. It tastes just like milk chocolate and has none of the fake sweetener.

Why not add them to a Christmas Stocking this year?

PLAYin CHOC has won numerous awards including the Global Travel Retail Award 2024, the Great Taste Award 2022, Gold at the Free From Food Award 2023 and a Gold Vegan Chocolate Award 2023 and is certified Organic Soil Association.

Available from £2.25 at:

ToyChoc Box®<br>CHRiSTMAS COLLECTiON

Happi Oat Milk Chocolate Advent Calendar

advent calendar, Children, chocolate, Christmas, Gifts for children, Vegan, Vegetarian

Disclaimer – We received this item free for the purpose of this review/feature but all words and opinions are our own.

The team at Happi are made up of parents who when looking for plant based treats, realised that there wasn’t a place for fun and healthy chocolate on the supermarket shelves – so they created Happi Chocolate for just that reason! In 2020, they came up with the idea of oat milk chocolate that was not only plant based, but lower in sugar than other plant based chocolate manufacturers and sustainably sourced and packaged. Their Happi Advent Calendar is right on track with the same principles and we were sent a lovely 24 day calendar to try out!

The Happi 3 flavour Oat Milk Advent Calendar is made entirely of recyclable products, mainly cardboard and paper, and contains an individually wrapped oak milk chocolate behind each window.  There are 3 flavours; plain, orange and salted caramel. The plain chocolate (and don’t worry, I’ve sampled enough of them for you!) is like any other chocolate but the aftertaste is more of the bitter chocolate rather than the sweetness you get with commercial chocolates. The orange chocolates taste of orange from the first bite and have only a slight orange after taste. The salted caramel flavours were my favourite because they had the slightly grainy texture from the salt but the caramel wasn’t too sweet and the lasting taste was that of the salt mixed with the chocolate. You wouldn’t know that they were made from oat milk and not cow’s milk.

The calendar is only fairly sturdy. It arrived at my house a bit wider than an A4 page and although the calendar and chocolate easily withstood the postal system, the cover and the printing did not.  I found it a bit difficult to open the windows myself, and that’s with my long nails because there are layers of cardboard which keep the shape of the calendar overall but also protect the chocolate. Children will probably need some help but the good news is that the cardboard is easily cut if you need it to be. Behind each window is one chocolate and that’s the same for day 24.

A genuine vegan, plant based chocolate is hard to find without it losing some of its flavour but Happi have a lovely product here and it’s not just for children!

Available from £15.00

Easter Eggs and Treats from NOMO

Children, chocolate, Easter, Family Life, Gifts for children, Gifts for Her, Gifts for Him, Gluten Free, Lunchbox Fillers, Vegan, Vegetarian

Disclaimer – We received this item free for the purpose of this review/feature but all words and opinions are our own.

NOMO want to ensure that Easter this year is available to everyone, so with their mantra, “No Missing Out” they are ready for anything! The NOMO range this year incudes chocolate which is dairy-free, gluten-free and egg-free plus plant based so there’s no excuses to buy something for everyone. We were sent a yummy selection to test before the big Easter Weekend… did we find something we all liked?

The NOMO Creamy Choc Egg and Mini Bars is a conventional Easter Egg with four mini bars of NOMO chocolates in flavours Choco Orange Crunch, Caramel, Mint and Caramel Sea Salt.  All of them are usual flavours of NOMO chocolate and found in shops, but together they make a package of chocolate and eggs for Easter. The mini bars are just like the creamy chocolate (which is comparable to milk chocolate just without the dairy!) in that they all taste like you expect chocolate to taste, but without the dairy, gluten, nuts or egg and are plant-powered.  They’re also all vegan too!

Next we tried the NOMO Choco Fudge Egg & Bunny. This is probably for older children or even dairy-free adults as the chocolate is much richer, more fudge filled and has tiny fudge pieces in it. The accompanying bunny is also a treat and filled of fudge too! Like the Creamy Choc egg, this too is dairy, gluten, nut and egg free with no palm oil and yes, it’s also vegan. Can you see where the theme, “No Missing Out” comes into play? No matter what you might be intolerable to or what you can’t eat, there’s a flavour of NOMO chocolate waiting for you.

Finally, the snack of grown-ups is the individually wrapped Choc Fudge Bunny. It’s part of the aforementioned Easter Egg combination but for 90 pence you can buy these on their own and enjoy a creamy chocolate hit.  The outside chocolate is creamy choc with a filling of a rich fudge flavoured centre.  At only 30 grams they are a sweet afternoon treat, or something to add to lunch to give you the chocolate hit but without the environmental guilt or having to think about what it might contain.  Also great for friends if you want to get them something for Easter but not something they might be allergic to, or if you’re unsure if they are vegan or vegetarian!

The Choc Fudge Easter Egg and the Bunny are probably my favourite because I love richer chocolate and the fudge makes a nice change. You really can’t tell if they’re conventional chocolate or free-from chocolate because they’re so well made and have all the flavour and sweetness of High Street chocolate.

No matter who you’re buying Easter Eggs for, this year you have a lovely choice from NOMO and no matter what someone’s need, or taste in chocolate, there is no reason for anyone to miss out.

NOMO Creamy Choc Eggs and Mini Bars (154 grams) MRRP £6.50:

NOMO Choc Fudge Bunny (30 grams) MRRP 90p:

NOMO Choc Fudge Egg & Bunny (160 grams) MRRP £6.50:

Sea Animal Collection from PLAYin CHOC

Children, coronation, cruelty-free, Food & Drink, Gifts for children, Lunchbox Fillers, Plastic free, Toys, Vegan, Vegetarian

Disclaimer – We received this item free for the purpose of this review/feature but all words and opinions are our own.

The brand new Sea Animals Collection from PLAYin CHOC is here in time for the Coronation weekend! The sustainable and ethically sourced chocolate is accompanied by a cut out toy of a sea animal along with an information card to educate children about the world around them.  If you remember Kinder Surprise as a child, then this is the modern, environmentally friendly version for the 21st century.

PLAYin CHOC was created by Mum Maya back in 2016 in her kitchen at home where she wanted to make simple chocolate for her family which was just cacoa, coconut and vanilla.  Crucially, it was also dairy free chocolate, hence there’s no milk or cream involved in the process, just coconut products.

With the help of her two children as ‘chief testers’, Maya perfected the Peruvian, fairly traded organic chocolate and created the PLAYin CHOC brand. Their mission is to create healthy chocolate treats without plastic, and to promote environmentally sensitive topics. Among other projects PLAYin CHOC have featured are Endangered Animals, Woodland Animals and even a whole dinosaur set!  At Christmas and Easter they produce Advent Calendars and gift boxes and this year PLAYin CHOC have produced the Sea Animals Collection.

We were sent these three boxes to indulge ourselves.  Opening the boxes, we found an orca, seahorse and swordfish. You can’t tell what’s in the box until you open it so it’s a great surprise for children. The box contains two pieces of chocolate (in recyclable plastic), a cut out of each animal which children can put together to create a toy and an information card about the animal, some facts and their personalities. There are 18 different animals to collect in all and the toys, which are made out of durable cardboard, can be used again and again, along with the cube boxes the chocolate and toys come in!

Although the chocolate is coconut based and vegan, it doesn’t taste very different to everyday chocolate so the kids won’t notice the change.  It is 100% plant based though so it will appeal to everybody – these make great gifts in children’s party bags or to keep them quiet on car journeys and whilst travelling.

With so many toys to choose from, healthier vegan chocolate and fair trade, what is there not to like about the PLAYin CHOC range, especially for the Coronation?

PLAYin CHOC Endangered Animals are £2.25 at: https://playinchoc.com/products/toychoc-box-br-sea_animals