Snacks: Vegan pretzel chocolate

It’s no secret that the duck and I are obsessed with grocery shopping. As mildly miserly misers, we always know what is on sale at all local grocery stores. So, when we saw that Chocjes bars were offered at almost half their usual price one week, we knew it was finally time to try one. Chocjes is a vegan chocolate bar by Katjes, a German candy company known for licorice and gummy candy. A few years ago, they transitioned to only producing vegetarian and vegan products. Out of the three Chocjes varieties on sale, cookie lover, salty pretzel, and sea caramel, the duck and I didn’t even have to think about which one we wanted to try. We are obsessed with pretzels, after all (why else would we create an animation about them?). And we’ve just recently focused on a cookie flavor. Since we have only done one chocolate-related taste test this year, the duck and I saw this vegan chocolate as the perfect opportunity for another one of our super subjective chocolate reviews:

Choc-yes or no?

Before I get to our thoughts on this chocolate, I’ll mention that the duck and my experience with vegan milk chocolate is limited (unlike our experience with vegan dark chocolate, which is most dark chocolate). We had a cheap vegan milk chocolate Advent calendar last year. We ate the chocolate because we had paid for it and because it was chocolate. But we didn’t love it. That might either be due to us being used to dairy milk chocolate or because the quality of the chocolate just wasn’t that great. The Advent calendar chocolate had a peanut base, I think. Chocjes bars are made with oat milk, the duck and my milk of choice. So, we were optimistic when we tried our first vegan oat milk bar.

Oats – Our all-time sweetheart ❤
The main ingredients in this chocolate bar are sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, 9% oat powder, and pretzel pieces. Almond- and hazelnut butter are also listed, presumably for their fat content that we think might help with a creamier texture.
The first bite was a relief. We certainly liked this chocolate much better than the Advent calendar chocolate. To us, it tastes like milk chocolate, though it does have a milder feel (in taste and texture). The duck and I haven’t drunk pure cow’s milk in a very long time, but we remember even low-fat milk being thicker than oat milk. This might be why this chocolate is not as creamy, rich, and fatty as dairy milk chocolate, even with the added nut butter. It is smooth, though, and not too sweet, and the pretzel pieces add a pleasant crunch and saltiness. The duck and I have tried other, non-vegan, pretzel-chocolate bars before, but we found them all to be a tad too heavy and sweet. The salty pretzel Chocjes bar has the perfect balance of sweet and salty, in our opinion. Our only criticism is that the chocolate tastes too mild for us to get this complete milk chocolate satisfaction. When we eat it, we feel like something is missing, which might only be because we are not used to vegan milk chocolate. Because of that, we can only award 4/5 super subjective ducks for this otherwise perfectly balanced light vegan chocolaty snack.The duck and I are happy that we have finally tried a Chocjes bar after repeatedly passing them in the grocery store, afraid by their comparatively expensive price tag. We suspect that, had we been used to vegan milk chocolate before trying this chocolate bar, it would have received a perfect score from us (as I can vaguely remember having similar feelings the first few times I tried any milk alternative, and oat milk now has the most neutral flavor to me). Unfortunately, we are not used to it (yet). And we have to stay true to our subjectivity and rate our present taste experience, rather than an imagined future one. The duck and I want to taste this Chocjes bar again after we have experienced more vegan milk chocolate varieties, though, and see whether our thoughts about the chocolate lacking something will have changed by then.

Have you ever tried vegan milk chocolate? Do you maybe even have a favorite (brand, variety, or dairy milk alternative)?