vegan chocolate chips?
Posted by mama_chicpea on Dec 21, 2006 · Member since Dec 2006 · 3 posts
hi there. i found this website a couple days ago and am already addicted.
anyway, wondering...what is the distinction between organic semi-sweet chocolate chips and non-dairy organic chocolate chips? i bought the org semi sweet once, not seeing anything discernably animal derived. but then today i bought the non-dairy...the ingredients are really similar except the non-dairy have wheat in them and are kind of bitter.
can anyone enlighten me? thanks in advance!
a lot of things that aren't explicity labeled "dairy free" are still vegan. they just don't label them as such because they are likely not selling them specifically to vegans. if there is no dairy in the chips (in semi-sweet chocolate chips the thing to watch out for is usually butteroil) then they are dairy-free.
trader joes brand semi-sweet chocolate chips are a good example. they are not labeled "dairy free" but they are in fact dairy free. hope this helps.
thanks for the quick reply. both kinds of chips use cocoa butter, so...? it is just perplexing, sold side by side in the bulk section. seems redundant, unless some people like to get their wheat from their chocolate?!
is it the sugar thing? are folks really going to the trouble of making organic sugar but then filtering it through animal-containing charcoal?
i am veggie but not vegan (though i prefer to bake vegan), but i was hoping to share some choc chip cookies (one of yummy recipes from here!) with a vegan friend and would hate to unknowingly ruin their vegan-ness.
i'd love if anyone could opin on this.
Am I correct? You're not saying you think cocoa butter makes it non-vegan, are you? I ask this bc I still get people asking me how I can eat peanut butter bc it has butter in it.
Anyway, Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips are what I use. They are readily available in most grocery stores and I really can't tell the difference btwn them and Nestle (for example.)
Tell your friend the ingredients and make sure she/he is OK with them. I use the Ghiradellis too.
thanks for more replies.
i didn't think they were non-vegan because of the cocoa butter, i was just noting the similarities and lack of butteroil.
so this morning i called my co-op (where i bought all of the aforementioned chips) and was told the semi-sweets were not vegan because they were made with milk chocolate. i am even more confused now, because (veggie or not) i never thought that was the case (the ingredients say "organic unsweetened chocolate").
are the ghiradelli ones marked kosher or just look for the semi-sweets?
thanks for all the info. i am going to try the recipe with the non-dairy and expand my horizons.
if anyone else can weigh in, i am happy to hear your thoughts. thanks again, and take care.
that doesn't make any sense....are you saying that the ingredients just listed "chocolate" as an ingredient without a paranthetical explaining what was in the chocolate?? that is extremely strange....
Just wanted to say that I also LOVE the grain-sweetened dairy free chocolate chips......I buy mine in bulk at Whole Foods (although I've also seen Sunspire grain-sweetened chips not in bulk). Definitely dairy-free, so if there's a whole foods near you......
I just bought a giant bagful today in the hopes of making the jeweled dark chocolate bark out of this month's VegNews.....