Ritter Sport – Vegan Whole Almonds & Quinoa

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t tend to have the best impression of snacks or candies that try to go vegan. Sure, the expectation is that it won’t be as good as the non-vegan version, but some are just really awful in comparison. I can understand how if you don’t have an alternative, it’s better than nothing sometimes but come on! There needs to be more effort put into it sometimes. And if it doesn’t work, it shouldn’t be sold. It’s really as simple as that to me. It’s also why I tend to have a negative associate with vegan products that market themselves in a way that leads you to think it’s as good as the original.

All that should give you a sense of just how much faith I have in Ritter Sport, that I would be willing to give their vegan line of bars a try. I figure the worst that could happen is I get a subpar chocolate bar that has almonds and quinoa. I wasn’t previously sold on quinoa in chocolate, but it gives it a really nice crunch that’s not dissimilar to puffed rice.

This particular bar is 50% chocolate, which makes sense. Going with a higher percent means more cocoa and less dairy. In this case that works out perfectly since it’s a vegan bar, so hopefully it won’t be too far off the normal affair. An interesting ingredient I noticed is hazelnut paste – I imagine it’s to help with flavour and consistency of the bar. It makes sense when you think about how tasty Nutella is.

Looking at it, it seems the quinoa settled to the bottom of the bar, as seen by the generous bubbles of the toasted quinoa. I can also make out some decent offerings of whole almonds, which always pairs great with a chocolate, especially a darker one. Truthfully I wouldn’t really be able to tell this bar was any different from their standard ones going off looks alone.

Taste is a whole other ball game though, so it comes as a bit of surprise that it really doesn’t taste that different from their usually darker bars. It doesn’t taste as smooth without the dairy from the milk powder, but overall if you enjoy a darker chocolate this is really not much of a departure from the regular. The almonds and quinoa are mostly for texture but have enough flavour to give it a bit of that distinct nuttiness to it.

The texture is also very similar to what you’d expect from a 50% bar – it’s not as smooth or melty as a milk chocolate but it’s not yet chalky or gritty. The almond and quinoa provide a really nice addition to the texture to give it a really nice snackable texture.

All in all, this is one of the bars that gives me hope that we can get more vegan chocolate that is just as good as the non-vegan ones. I’d even go so far as to say that I would go out of my way to get this bar again, because it’s just a tasty experience all round. This is a great start, since Ritter Sport has plenty of other vegan bars which I am now enticed to try.