New discoveries: Vegan snack round up

Is it possible to take pretty pictures of crisps? Not if you're me it isn't. I'm not gifted behind the camera at the best of times, but taking photos of bags of salty snacks is a skill I find I'm particularly missing. 

So, I'm going to have to take a pretty picture with my words. Talking of beautiful, my current vegan snack crush is Hippeas. Aside from their fairly terrible name, there's a lot of love about Hippeas. First off, they're made of chick peas, and so confer an air of virtuousness. But don't trust the Hippeas - they're tricksy beasts. 

From a quick glance at their friendly puffy texture, you'd be expecting to sink your teeth into something with a texture fairly fluffy that would collapse into gossamer when they meet your mouth - a vegan Wotsit if you will. Not so. There's an impressive crunch that's fairly surprising at first, then wanders into the territory of out and out pleasing.

 

There are four flavours of Hippeas: Pepper Power, In Herbs We Trust, Far Out Fajita, and Sweet and Smokin'. I've tried them all, and I'm a now a groupie of Far Out Fajita.

Other new discoveries in my snack world: Rebel Kitchen, maker of flavoured vegan milks (or mylks, if you'd rather), has got into the yoghurt game. Like Hippeas, it's thinking in fours: you can Rebel Kitchen's coconut yoghurt in vanilla, cacao, original, and coffee.

I picked up coffee, because it's one of my favourite flavours. I'd probably eat iron filings with a big spoon if you told me that they were coffee flavoured. If I could find a readymade vegan coffee ice cream, I'd be a happy bunny.

Until then, I'm happy to chow down on Rebel Kitchen's coffee yoghurt. It's a mild coffee flavour in a thick yoghurt, and while it's not enough to shift Coconut Collaborative from the spot as my favourite purveyor of all things coconut and yoghurty, there's still room in my fridge for Rebel Kitchen too.

Hippeas and Rebel Kitchen are fairly budget-friendly options for your snacking pleasure at £1.20ish and £2ish respectively, not all vegan nibbles can be bought with a couple of coins. Some vegan treats are more of the fancy dan eat-this-and-you-will-live-forever kind.

Take Livia's Kitchen, for example. It's a company that makes snacks with 'nutritional twists' - the usual no diary, no gluten, no processed sugar type stuff. I'm not gluten intolerant, and I'm happy to have my sugar in any form you like as long as there's no bone char involved.

That said, if you put something involving caramel and chocolate in front of me, and tell me it's vegan, I'm going to shove it in my face. Even if it costs £5. Yep, Livia's Kitchen's biscuits cost £5 a go.

Here's what you get for your £5:

Oh look, there's another thing that I can't take a decent photo of. And another thing that I'm going to have to trust me on that it tastes great. It's made of raw dates, oats, nuts, that sort of thing. And it's fab. Each biscuit - or raw millionaire bite, if you'd rather - is rather tiny, but so good, you'll find yourself going back for several.

Interestingly, on the Livia's Kitchen website, there's promise of a salted caramel and chocolate orange 'grab and go' bites to launch soon. Hopefully they'll be priced in a way that's more friendly to a student's wallet than the tubs. If so, I'll be grabbing and going with Livia's more often.

While healthy snacks have their place, so do non-healthy ones. I'm already a dedicated fan of Eat Real's lentil, quinoa, and hummus chips (particularly the dill ones, oh yes) but when I saw a new edition to the company's range, I couldn't turn it down.

Look, kale-flavoured Eat Real sticks! Could there be anything more stereotypical for vegans to eat than anything with kale in? This is one stereotype I'm happy to indulge in. I really liked the Veggie and Kale Chips, but be warned - there's not much of kale taste in there. There's a lot of crunch (and a lot of salt), but they're still a solid vegan treat.

And last but not least in my round-up, the strangely elusive pastrami flavour crisps from the always wonderful Ten Acre, whose cheese and onion crisps regularly bring a big cheesy grin to my face. Well, I say always wonderful, I should say 'mostly wonderful' because my very high hopes for pastrami flavoured crisps were somewhat disappointed. I love pastrami flavours, and occasionally make pastrami flavoured tofu. These were just OK, rather than the peppery, paprikay wonders I was hoping. Ten Acre, I still love you, but I'm going back to the cheese and onion now.