It is Veganuary! Which usually means that the stores are stocked full of brand new vegan items for the entire month of January, before returning to a smaller selecetion as soon as February 1st hits. Unfortuantely I have found that in recent years, Veganuary is barely talked about and very rarely advertised, so I tend to have to do a lot of the searching myself to see if a certain brand or shop has anything new on offer during January.
Aldi, however, seems to have pulled out all the stops this year and have introduced a huge selection of new vegan items to their product line, with the vast majority of it all being their own brand products too which is always good to see. I know that the selection varies from store to store, as I find my local store is often quite barren whilst other people online seem to have hit gold with their Aldi store. I was therefore fully prepared for diappointment when I entered the shop to have a look around.
I was mostly on the look out for these little ice crem bars. I used to love snickers chocolate bars before I went vegan and it is still something I am on the lookout for. A highlight of my summer used to be when the snickers ice cream bars would return to stores, and so when I saw that these were now being offered as a vegan product in Aldi, I did get quite excited. Now whilst they do have a direct snickers ice cream bar equivalent, my husband is allergic to peanuts and so unfortunately I can’t actually have them in the house (not worth the risk). Thankfully though, Aldi do have a similar option available which contain almonds rather than peanuts which is a much safer option for us and therefore they came home with me immediately.
These are exactly what you would expect from them. The ice cream is a plain vanilla and the almond layer on top is creamy and tasty without being too overpowering, which I find many nuts can do. The chocolate layer on the outside does have a very satisfying crunch to it when you bite in, and complements the vanilla and almond inside very well indeed. That being said, as with all Aldi products (at least in my experience), it is a very simple product that is done very well. There isn’t really much else to say about this as it is very much a basic dessert. It tastes very nice, has all the satisfying textures you would want, and very much satisfies that sweet tooth.
One complaint I would have is that it is quite small. I wouldn’t necessarily want it to be huge – you abolutely would not be able to finish it – but I do think it could have been made to be just that little bit bigger, mainly so that there could be a bit more almond filling inside. Whilst it is tasty, the almond filling did get a little bit lost in the amount of ice cream it contains, so having more space for almond may have helped balance this out a little better.
A pack of three cost £1.99, which is pretty cheap. I do find Aldi to be very good for cheap but decent food products – you do not expect to find anything mind blowing or overly decadent in Aldi, but you know that whatever you buy will be very much affordable whilst still being tasty and satisfying. Which in this current economic climate is always needed! The ice cream bars are also frozen so can easily last until the summer. Aldi does tend to be very good at keeping their new Veganuary offerings in store all year round, but if you did want to stock up, you know you can without any risk of the freezing process affecting the flavours in anyway.
Taylor Talks Vegan 