Vegan Chocolate
Vegetarian and Vegan-Friendly Chocolate for Baking, Snacking & Confectionery Work
Looking for vegan chocolate that tastes great but conforms with specialty dietary requirements? Home and professional bakers, confectioners, and pastry chefs are increasingly looking for healthy, plant-based, dairy free, and allergen free options for ingredients. OliveNation offers a variety of vegan chocolate to accommodate changing needs and trends in the bakery, confectionery, and commercial food service arenas.
What is Vegan Chocolate?
Vegetarian-friendly and vegan chocolates are those that have been made without the use of animal products. It's tempting to think that all chocolate is compatible with vegetarian diets, because chocolate is made from cocoa beans, which are plants. However, that changes when milk and/or other dairy products are added to pure cocoa powder to create chocolate. Bittersweet or dark chocolate that is made without milk or other dairy is vegan, unless it contains sugar that has been processed with bone char, which is an animal-based product. It's important to remember that while all vegan chocolates are non-dairy, not all non-dairy chocolates are vegan!
In order to be considered truly vegan, chocolate must contain no products that came from animals, or were processed using animal by-products. Pure, unrefined chocolate is made by separating ground cocoa beans into cocoa powder and cocoa butter, then recombining the two. The ratio used, as well as the use of additional ingredients, determines the final "type" of chocolate that will be created. Unsweetened chocolate that contains only cocoa butter and cocoa powder is vegan. To be considered vegan, sweetened or bittersweet chocolates must use a vegan-friendly form of sugar. Vegan milk chocolate must use non-dairy ingredients, such as plant-based milk, as well as vegan-friendly sweeteners.
Vegetarian and plant-based foods are becoming increasingly popular for dietary, health-based, and ecological reasons. In addition to our vegan chocolate selection, OliveNation offers a wide selection of ingredients that are ideal for use in Better-for-You and clean label applications, such as certified organic products and clean-label ingredients.