This vegan chocolate brand makes wickedly good treats that may taste familiar – and you can get 25% off
LoveRaw is being clever with plant-based confectionary
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Your support makes all the difference.Anything with chocolate in it, at least in our books anyway, just has a certain je ne sais quoi that makes it irresistible. Whether you look for chocolate-based desserts on menus or crave it as your “something sweet”, you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about.
When it comes to finding vegan chocolate treats, if the dark and sometimes bitter (and often accidentally vegan) options are something you could take or leave most of the time, there are plenty of brands that are in the business of recreating that somewhat indefinable chocolate bar experience for us.
It’s this fine art that chocolate brand LoveRaw claims to have mastered with its range of vegan bars and treats, which are meant to be wickedly good whether you’re plant-based-inclined or otherwise. At a glance, you may think they look similar to some other chocolate favourites on the shelves – you’ll know which we mean – but we’ll get into that later.
Check out the LoveRaw range at Eatloveraw.com
The wholly vegan and B-corp-certified brand first started back in 2013, with husband and wife duo Rimi and Manav Thapar – whose likenesses feature on the packaging. Everything in the range is palm-oil free and made with only natural ingredients. To see whether it really is as gamechanging as all that, we took on the task of taste testing the range.
It’s also worth knowing that if you order your choc of choice before 9 May, you can save 25 per cent when you spend £25, using the code “VEGANCHOC25”.
LoveRaw: Eatloveraw.com
Subscription: Every two, four or six weeks
Rating: 4.5/5
We’ll admit, we did actually wonder, for a moment, whether the LoveRaw chocolate would in fact be raw, which we think is a fair assumption. If you were wondering too, the chocolate isn’t raw but it doesn’t have any artificial ingredients and preservatives in it, which we think is worth noting, if this is something you look for in your chocolate.
When it comes to variety, there’s a choice of chocolate bars, cream wafer bars, nutty chocolate balls and peanut butter cups. As we’ve mentioned, they do look very similar to a variety of already popular chocolate treats. And, if our taste buds (and memory, as we haven’t eaten milk chocolate in a while) aren’t deceiving us, they taste quite similar too.
With only vegan milk chocolate and white chocolate within its range, LoveRaw uses mainly rice and oat powder to create that creaminess associated with milk chocolate, which does mean this isn’t the place to find deep, rich dark chocolate, should this be your preferred palate-pleaser.
We think it’s fair to say nothing about these bars really gives them away as being plant-based, which is something our non-vegan helper could attest to. While the chocolate outer layer is obviously very important here, we also have to say LoveRaw has really nailed its velvety fillings.
Instantly addictive, we love the nutty chocolate balls (£6.99, Eatloveraw.com), which are filled with a generous layer of ganache-like, thick hazelnut cream surrounding a single hazelnut for a bit of bite. Whether eaten in one or nibbled layer by layer, they’re a very good riff on a Ferrero Rocher – the perfect combination of light and satisfyingly decadent, wrapped in a bumpy layer of crispy wafer with hazelnut pieces for crunch.
As we’re chocolate fans through and through, the milk chocolate cream wafer bar (£10.99, Eatloveraw.com) was our favourite of the four, which was seriously similar to Kinder Bueno, even down to the smell upon opening the packet. The others include caramelised biscuit (£10.99, Eatloveraw.com), white chocolate (£10.99, Eatloveraw.com) and salted caramel wafer bars (£10.99, Eatloveraw.com), each of which are light, crispy and flakey with velvety cream filling each snappable segment.
With a touch of cinnamon and crumbly biscuit texture, it took us a minute or two to figure out what the caramelised biscuit wafer bar reminded us of. If you love Lotus Biscoff, you will love these.
Read more: Best vegan subscription boxes
Peanut-butter-lovers will make a beeline for the peanut butter cups (£10.99, Eatloveraw.com). These are quite slim and easily smooshed in the middle – which is no bad thing – with a silky and smooth peanut butter filling. A great little snack, we enjoyed nibbling around the chunky rim (the only way to eat peanut butter cups, in our opinion) and these weren’t as sweet as we expected, making them the perfect mid-afternoon booster.
While not usually fans of white chocolate, we actually enjoyed the buttery, milky taste and texture of the white chocolate peanut butter cups (£10.99, Eatloveraw.com), which weren’t at all sickly sweet like some white chocolate can be.
The verdict: LoveRaw
If you’re looking for that indefinable chocolate experience that keeps you coming back for just one more piece, we think you will really like LoveRaw’s vegan chocolate range. Riffing off popular non-vegan bars on the shelves, the brand has carved a clever niche for itself, making this a brilliant choice for anyone looking to enjoy something familiar to their old favourites but plant-based.
It’s done well to create velvety, seriously moreish fillings that are light yet decadent, with our standout favourite being the nutty chocolate balls (£6.99, Eatloveraw.com) for their melt-in-the-mouth, ganache-like centre – a favourite of our non-vegan tester too. We can’t wait to see what LoveRaw does next.
Remember, if you order £25 worth of LoveRaw before 9 May, you can save 25 per cent with the code “VEGANCHOC25”.
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This plant-based food subscription brought flavour to our lunch hour