How do I make this recipe vegan?

[queermarc]

I admit I am not very clever and am very much a newbie when it comes to making an existing recipe vegan (I am still transitioning so please be gentle). I usually make a complete hash of things so I would like to ask for advice from experienced vegans.

There is a protein bar I found on YouTube which I really liked.

Home Made Protein Bar

(Source: NATURALGC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv-LcIC5gtc)


Dry ingredients:

 2 cups oatmeal

 1 cup protein powder

 1/4 cup flaked almonds

 1/3 cup dried cranberries

 1/2 tbsp cinnamon


Wet ingredients:

 1/4 cup peanut butter or almond butter

1/4 cup agave nectar
 (I have doubled this - it makes the mix wetter and more enjoyable)
1/4 cup almond milk

1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce

1/4 cup 70% dark chocolate

1 tsp vanilla extract



Mix dry ingredients in one bowl and wet in another. Microwave the wet for 30seconds, stir well. Repeat until mix is creamy. Add the dry mixture to the wet and mix together. Pour into 8”x8” tray and flatten. Put in refrigerator for 20 minutes. Remove and cut into bars. 8 oblong or 16 squares!


I need to sort out the chocolate element, and I want to do this using carob powder or cacao powder. Since the chocolate in the recipe will be part of the thickening I am concerned if i just replace chocolate with the powders I will have a ghastly dry stodge. Any ideas how best to have the thickening element the chocolate would have provided? I am trying to be economical and vegan chocolate I have tried has been too expensive for me and it lacked the intensity that non-vegan high percentage (70+) cooking chocolate has.

If you ever had hot chocolate in Italy, especially in Venice, you would know how thick, velvety and deep the experience is. It's better than sex. Much better! That is my ultimate chocoholic challenge, to reproduce the taste and experience from a cold, crisp Christmas Day when fingers are numb, even under gloves, as the wind blasts down from the Dolomites. That I will have to save for another post if I ever make something passably good.

[Talyn]

That recipe is already vegan...

Kinnerton do a vegan dark chocolate, which you can usually find in Sainsburys and Waitrose.

Lindt dark chocolate is vegan as well.

[Lordmuppet]

That recipe is already vegan...

Kinnerton do a vegan dark chocolate, which you can usually find in Sainsburys and Waitrose.

Lindt dark chocolate is vegan as well.

also Green and Blacks 85% and many others

[xrodolfox]

Yeah, whats the non-vegan ingredient?

Chocolate?
Chocolate is often vegan. Cocoa butter is not made from cow milk, it is made from cocoa, and is vegan.

Protein powder? Soy protein, or pea protein, or rice protein, or a mix of those are all easily available vegan protein powders. Just check to see they didn't mix something else like whey in their.

It seems quite straight forward.

Do any of the other ingredient miff you?

[NatB]

I thought the jury was out on Green & Blacks dark chocolate? thought they couldnt guarantee it was vegan?

[vCLaW]

I thought the jury was out on Green & Blacks dark chocolate? thought they couldnt guarantee it was vegan?

They were listing milk as an ingredient for a while (because it may have contained milk), but not any more. So it is vegan again.

Or Divine dark chocolate is vegan. Or most of the supermarkets have own brand 70% chocolate, which is vegan - Lidl or Aldi have cheap dark chocolate.

[Lordmuppet]

I thought the jury was out on Green & Blacks dark chocolate? thought they couldnt guarantee it was vegan?

They were listing milk as an ingredient for a while (because it may have contained milk), but not any more. So it is vegan again.

Or Divine dark chocolate is vegan. Or most of the supermarkets have own brand 70% chocolate, which is vegan - Lidl or Aldi have cheap dark chocolate.

Divine is the best in my opinion

edited: nice that it's super easy to buy fairtrade vegan chocolate now in the UK!

[queermarc]

Thanks to you all. I thought a lot of chocolate products, if not the overwhelming majority, were tainted by dairy. It just goes to prove I really don't know a lot about food after all these years of not taking control of my food and eating junk.

So can anybody tell me how to get a good creamy drinking chocolate with a thick creamy liquid that doesn't come from animals? Is there some way to cheat almond/rice/soy milk into being creamy?

Green & Blacks products have been blacklisted in this household since the Kraft takeover of Cadbury. The queermarc household is mightily fed up of buying products from what were British companies and which now line the pockets of overseas companies. Don't even get me started on Amazon which is the source of last resort for me and is now nearer to complete prohibition.

And yes, just for the record, we did not like buying South African produce in the era of apartheid. I'm sorry one and all, but we are irrevocably left of centre, but that does not mean anti-capitalist, the world is too complicated a place for everything to be clear cut black and white!

Many thanks again for your help. This is the best all round vegan site I have found. You are a friendly lot.

[blinki]

So can anybody tell me how to get a good creamy drinking chocolate with a thick creamy liquid that doesn't come from animals? Is there some way to cheat almond/rice/soy milk into being creamy?

Have you tried just heating some chocolate soy milk? That's what I do if I want hot chocolate. I don't think I'd say it's hugely creamy but it's good and easy. Alpro do cream, I've never tried it since I don't like cream anyways but adding some of that is probably worth trying.

[Catt Queen]

Soy milk is thicker than cows milk so it seems creamy anyway.

[queermarc]

Have you tried just heating some chocolate soy milk? That's what I do if I want hot chocolate. I don't think I'd say it's hugely creamy but it's good and easy. Alpro do cream, I've never tried it since I don't like cream anyways but adding some of that is probably worth trying.

blinki, until you have had hot chocolate in Italy, and more especially in Venice, there is no comparison. Everything else is just a chocolate drink (and I speak as a lover of everything French in the kitchen). It's like the difference between bog standard olive oil for cooking and the more expensive extra virgin varieties for flavouring and texture. The different varieties of flavourings is impressive too!

[blinki]

I guess you'll need to make something yourself then if you have particularly high standards. Green and blacks do hot chocolate. Seems vegan to me but says may contain dairy so I guess it's a manufacturing process risk of cross contamination thing. Maybe play around with that, different sorts of milk and cream. You can probably find a recipe which is easily veganised

[nomeat]

Hi, I tried a similar recipe once and I used carob and Divine - it worked really well, so just give it a try!

[osric]

So can anybody tell me how to get a good creamy drinking chocolate with a thick creamy liquid that doesn't come from animals? Is there some way to cheat almond/rice/soy milk into being creamy?

Here in the US we have both soy- and coconut milk-based coffee creamer. It's thick and creamy and subs pretty well for the dairy creamer that we call "half and half." The soy creamer is made by Silk and the the coconut version by So Delicious. I haven't found anything off the shelf that's close to whipping cream or heavy cream yet.

I make a thick cream through either of two methods:
1. by blending up some silken tofu and creamer in a food processor; or
2. by mixing together tofu cream cheese and a couple of tablespoons of creamer. I mix this by hand.

The silken tofu method results in a more liquid cream concoction, the cream cheese one is more like a creme fraiche or clotted cream. You'd probably want to use the silken tofu method to make the hot chocolate.

The trick to Italian hot chocolate is that they use both heavy cream and corn starch to get that thick consistency. There's a recipe for Italian hot chocolate here (scroll down the page):
http://foodloversodyssey.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/12/italian-hot-chocolate-at-carnevale-in-venice.html.

If you try making this, you might want to add some extra sugar. I've noticed that tofu tends to kick up bitterness when mixed with chocolate, so you just need to compensate a little. And you may not need the corn starch at all depending on the thickness of the cream you make.

Have fun - and if it doesn't work the first time, try it again!