One of my favorite holiday recipes is white chocolate pretzel mix with M & M’s, but I hadn’t been able to find any vegan M & M’s that I liked. Until now that is. I ordered these Unreal brand “dark chocolate crispy quinoa gems” from Vitacost, and they are perfect for my recipe!
The colors look pretty good and the candies taste great! The chocolate is definitely dark as you would expect from the name, and my mom and I both think it is a bit darker than a semi-sweet chocolate. We can only barely tell that there are crispy bits inside because the shell is crispy too, but that didn’t matter for my recipe.
Here is what the back of the bag looks like:
And, here are the ingredients and nutrition facts:
We definitely recommend this candy, and will be buying it again! I am so glad to be able to make my white chocolate pretzel mix again, and will be sharing the recipe in my next post. Here is a sneak peek photo (with the chocolate tinted light pink for Valentine’s Day):
What brand of pretzels did you use? This recipe inspires me to make vegan white chocolate covered pretzel twists, with crushed peppermint candy canes. Bob’s brand candy canes taste the best to me. Glad to read about another vegan candy option, to use in place of M&M’s. Other brands are okay, but don’t taste “familiar.”
I used Synder’s brand gluten free pretzels, and will be posting my white chocolate pretzel mix recipe in a little bit! Candy canes would be really good with it too, especially drizzled with dark chocolate – I will have to make that for Yule later this year!
Ah, Winter Solstice. I enjoyed reading about your countdown to Yule last year! It inspired me to organize a formal celebration of my own for the occasion.
I am disappointed to read about the Little Secrets chocolates not being certified vegan. I had bought bags of their peppermint candies for December last year.
Maybe they will certify their sugar if they receive enough pressure from consumers?
I’m so glad my Yule posts were helpful to you! My mom and I really enjoyed our countdown and are going to make it a yearly tradition.
It’s worth a try to ask Little Secrets to use vegan certified sugar!
Speaking of the Yule posts-
I enjoyed your St. Nicholas Day post as well. That’s how I make my rice cereal treats, too. I like to make one batch of plain, then a second batch with chocolate rice cereal. I use Mom’s Best cocoa rice cereal for that.
I believe it is vegan.
I hope it is vegan?
Thank you! Cocoa rice crispy treats sound really good! (I looked at the ingredients on the Mom’s Best cereal, and it looks vegan to me since it doesn’t have D3 added like so many other cereals do.)
Have you tried Little Secrets dark chocolate candies? Do you not care for their taste? Does Unreal taste better?
I have not tried Little Secrets yet, but I want to! I chose the Unreal ones because they were multi-colored and look like M & M’s for my pretzel mix.
Sorry to be a party pooper, but I don’t think the Little Secrets candy is vegan. It’s only dairy-free. It’s a shame because they are tasty.
That’s too bad! I just checked their website and they do say they are not verifying their sugar source. They could do that easily, so I am not impressed. I’m glad I got the Unreal ones!