Chocolate is one of the trickiest things to source if you’re dairy-free, and/or nut-free. Whilst the range of available, safe and yummy chocolate has increased dramatically in recent years, it is still the one ingredient that can catch us out. We’ve had more accidental expose to an allergen through chocolate than anything else, whether this is through a ‘vegan’ chocolate dessert in a restaurant, or bad labelling.
The reality is that is you have a serious milk allergy then the risk of cross contamination from chocolate is one of the highest – if you think about those machines you see on ‘Inside the Factory’ when they’re making chocolate, it totally makes sense that they’re really difficult to clean properly. So if you’re really sensitive to milk then it’s advisable to only eat chocolate that is declared free-from milk. This risk is obviously similar should you be sensitive to nuts and nut products are manufactured on the same equipment.
My advice is to never trust a vegan chocolate bar unless it specifically states that it is free-from milk. If it says may contain on a chocolate product then it really may contain!
These days we never risk puddings in restaurants – so often the safe pudding will be chocolate based and whilst it may be declared as dairy-free and vegan, in our experience cross contamination is likely. Chocolate is also an area where people think they know more than they do – when asked if it’s dairy-free they’ll have seen the vegan label and presume that must be fine, but with chocolate you just can’t rely on that. (Unless of course you are ok with potential traces of milk, in which case vegan may be fine).
Having said all that, I love using chocolate in my recipes (you may have noticed!!) and here are the brands I depend upon, that I can rely upon to not cause a nasty accidental exposure.
- Nomo – we’ve long been fans of Nomo, in fact the dark Kinnerton bars were our go-to before the rebranding, in fact they were one of the few bars we could trust. The range has become more and more varied and lots of thought is put into making the chocolates appealing. When my girls were tiny we had to rely on serious looking bars of dark Kinnerton or we’d occasionally get Whizzers (remember those free from Smarties?) or chocolate footballs from health food shops so it’s a delight to see more fun chocolate around. Despite a chequered history with Nomo (they’ve used my recipes as their own twice – highly disappointing when you champion a brand for many years, but at least they did apologise!) I’m still a huge fan, and so delighted by what they do and the wide availability of some really delicious chocolates.
- MooFree – another brand we’ve been long time fans of and again the fact they make their chocolate appealing to the younger customer is just great. They used to use hazelnuts in the factory but have stopped, meaning there is no longer any trace of nuts in the chocolate. The whole range is free-from dairy, wheat, gluten and soya. The white chocolate is the best free-from version I’ve come across and we all love the MooFreasers!
- Enjoy! is a brand I’ve only more recently been championing, but the chocolate is really nice quality with some interesting flavours and they do some rather lovely fudge and exciting filled bottons too. As a bonus they’re fairly local to me (based in Hampshire) and have a really lovely ethos. The entire factory and range of chocolate is free-from dairy, soya, egg, gluten, peanuts and tree nuts. they also don’t use sesame or any of the other top 14 allergens. Do look out for the filled bars for a rather delicious treat.
- Callebaut NXT – a really good quality plant-based free-from chocolate that comes in easy melt callets (buttons) making it perfect to work with for chocolate creations. I’ve never seen Callebaut NXT in a shop, it’s the kind of Belgian chocolate that restaurants and caterers use, so you have to buy 5kg bags, but this does make it good value for money compared to buying expensive free-from bars. The website says allergen free and the factory is nut-free but there is lecithin on the bag and it doesn’t specify the source so I wouldn’t feel confident to say it’s soya free. The milk version used tigernuts (not a nut) to give the creamy effect.
- CocoLibre – CocoLibre make really cute rice milk chocolate shapes – think chicks or bunnies and it’s really tasty too. These are the sort of chocolates you’d like to receive as a gift! All the products are free-from nuts’ dairy and gluten.
- Pacari – Pacari sells ethically sourced fair trade chocolate that is of amazing quality and with some really interesting flavours. It is all free-from dairy, soy, gluten and 100% organic. the couverture is great quality too.
- Magibles – Made by Creative Nature these little biscuity chocolate coated balls are seriously moreish and getting more and more widely available. Once you start the pack you won’t be able to stop! Free-from gluten, dairy, nuts and soya.
- Plamil – a great reliable free-from brand. These big bags of baking drops are fantastic and we always have a jar of the chocolate spread in our cupboard
- Supermarket own brands – the free-from section is normally pointless unless you’re gluten-free but is can be good for chocolate bars. Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Morrisons all sell nice safe bars of chocolate.
Have i forgotten any brands? Let me know which chocolate you trust and find delicious, I’m always looking for more chocolate choice!!
