5 replies to this topic

[GFreeMO]

I just wanted to let the other dairy free people here know that The Enjoy Life candy bars are really really good. I found them at Whole Foods over the weekend. I bought a few of the rice crunch ones. They taste like what I remember Nestle Crunch tasted like. They are really worth the money. No soy either for those that watch that.

[Adalaide]

There are a lot of dairy free chocolate options without having to go to specialty foods. You simply have to go to high end chocolates. I got a disk of Chocolate Mexicano for my birthday that is gluten, soy and dairy free. I am excited to make some hot chocolate! I also have a few squares left of a bar (I lost the wrapper long ago to know the brand) that has some kind of fruit or another maybe and pink peppercorns in it. It is quite exquisite! (Although admittedly not for everyone.) There is also Endangered Species chocolate, which is processed on equipment with dairy, and has soy lecithin but I'm allowed that even though I avoid soy. To be honest though, that was was okay but not great, I wouldn't buy it again at $4 a bar. I wasn't thrilled so used it up making hot chocolate instead of eating it. I'm not sure why I still have the wrapper on my desk, maybe for the monkey?

Anyway, I usually pay between $4 (pretty cheap for me, and used for hot chocolate) and $10-$15 a chocolate bar. It is only the cheaper ones and ones with added things, like the pink peppercorns and fruit, that have more than 3-5 ingredients and it is rare for any of these to be milk or soy. Outside of my hot chocolate I usually only eat 1-2 squares of chocolate a month, so while it sounds expensive it isn't really. There is something intensely satisfying about quality chocolate you can't get from a bar that is waxy crap. I simply don't crave it any more in the way I used to. My chocolate sits on the pedestal of my monitor and I have the self control of a toddler when I want chocolate, I still spend months eating a single bar. If you can hook yourself on quality chocolate, you'll totally get it.

[GFreeMO]

These are certified gluten , soy, dairy, nut and egg free....sulfite free and a couple of other "frees" too. I think they taste very good. They are around 2 dollars a bar. I like to eat a square and then eat some raisins or sunflower seeds with it.
These are made with rice milk...pretty tasty..give them a try.

[Adalaide]

I guess if you're into milk chocolate and looking for a replacement that works. My birthday chocolate disks are made of organic cacao beans, organic cane sugar, organic cinnamon. They're pretty free of nearly everything but sugar and chocolate, although they don't say they're certified. Then again things don't need to be either. It is more important that my chocolate be direct trade than "certified" gluten free. I lost my taste for milk chocolate before I gave up iodine dairy, so it was no great loss to me. To me, adding milk to chocolate (cow or otherwise) is practically a sin. But as always, that is merely an opinion. If you are into milk chocolate and found some that is dairy free, I think that is great.

(Found the brand listed on my chocolate. Taza. I haven't opened it to try it yet, but I probably will tonight. The whole point of it is for hot chocolate, I'll probably have a little nibble and put a whole disk of it in a cup of hot milk. Screw tradition and water... blech, I prefer richer chocolate than that.)

[ButterflyChaser]

I think Gnosis chocolate is both dairy and soy free. Theo doesn't use soy, but they are not gluten-free certified nor Df certified because they certainly use those in certain bars.

To my delight, now that I am in Italy, I have discovered that most mainstream chocolate brands, like Perugina, are gluten-free and soy-free (they use sunflower lechitin). This is not the same in the US with the same brands. Weird.

[JNBunnie1]

I've always enjoyed Dagoba but do not know it's status as to being free of
other things, been too long since I ate any chocolate to know. The nice thing
about Enjoy Life brand is they sell chips and chunks that are also free of
everything, and also don't have any rice milk added, so you can just eat them
straight or melt them down for candy shapes. It really is very, very good stuff,
whether the bars or the dark chips/chunks.