To Live and Eat in L.A.

Missionary Chocolates is a boutique vegan truffle company from Portland, Oregon run by two sisters. Their unique truffles are all vegan, lactose free and gluten free and are just as rich & delicious as their cream based counterparts. Their secret is an organic coconut milk which they tell us “is the perfect base to produce velvety ganache that one waits for when biting into a truffle”. Mmmmmm, I’m drooling already!

The lovely ladies behind Missionary Chocolates hooked me up with a generous sampling of their amazing truffles, enough to share at a gathering with a few of my fellow bloggers and vegan friends. While I had the intention of taking lots of pictures and notes on everyone’s reactions, it just didn’t work out that way. You can only stop a group of candy-loving vegans from pouncing on a box of opened chocolates for so long! I did manage to get a few nice shots though, so feast your eyes on some of this:

This is just one of the boxes we devoured, showing some of the assortment we had. The ones with the dusty coating on them are the Dark Chocolate Delight: “Our classic European-style truffle. Infused with a hint of organic Singing Dog Vanilla to perfect this truly delightful confection. Decorated with a dusting of raw organic cacao powder from the amazing Holy Kakow Chocolate guys.”

The one on the bottom right is the Smooth Espresso Square: “Equal Exchange French Roast coffee is simmered into our rich organic coconut milk to obtain it’s creamy coffee flavor. Your daily ration of caffeine, in a very portable package! Decorated with ground cacao nibs.”

It doesn’t get much better than caffeine and chocolate. If I remember correctly, Miss Alix, both a caffeine and coffee connoisseur highly enjoyed these espresso treats.

The cute round molded chocolates at the top of the box are the brand new Caramel Truffles, not yet available but coming soon. Oh man, these were so good… they reminded me of Rolo’s. Chocolate with caramel will always be at the top of my list.
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One of the great things about Twitter (you follow me, right?) is finding and getting to know other like minded people and those who share similar interests, no matter what you’re into.

Sometimes the best of both worlds collide and I get to cross paths with folks who are not only righteous vegans but who also produce righteous vegan food. And by righteous I of course mean AWESOME. Thus was this case when I came across Barbara from Gone Pie Vegan Bakery (@gonepie on Twitter).

About Gone Pie Bakery in their own words:

“Gone Pie is a small bakery that has served the New York area for over 25 years. Started in a storefront on East 7th Street in Manhattan as Bread & Roses, Gone Pie has evolved into a wholesale/on-line business, catering to those with specialized diets. Today we have a wide variety of products suited to vegan, wheatfree, and glutenfree diets.

As vegans ourselves, we know how hard it is to find something vegan that tastes good. We prepare our products with the utmost concern for dietary requirements. These are the same products available in the finer New York City health food stores. Whenever possible, we use organic, locally produced ingredients. The vegan world is growing every day. With so many choices available, we strive to combine integrity of ingredients and an understanding of dietary needs in the production of a truly delicious treat. No animal products are ever used in our facility.”

Healthy and tasty? Well bring it on then! And they did just that… Barbara hooked me up bigtime with some serious samples of what Gone Pie Bakery has to offer. Here’s a look at some of what I got to try:

Vegan Pumpkin Brownies: Shown here slathered in luscious dark chocolate frosting. I’d recently questioned whether chocolate and pumpkin were flavors that work well together… this gorgeous, glistening specimen is proof that they most certainly do.
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On a very auspicious evening not long ago, a select group of agents gathered under cover of darkness to taste test one of the newest weapons in the vegan arsenal of delicious things- Go Max Go! Candy Bars.

These are no ordinary candy bars you see, they are 100% vegan chocolate bars that imitate some of your favorite “normal” chocolate bars from before you went vegan (Snickers, Milky Way, Almond Joy & 3 Musketeers). “All Go Max Go candy bars are covered in our signature-recipe rice-milk chocolaty coating. Light and lovely, it makes dairy-milk chocolate positively passé.” These promised to be every bit as delicious as the real thing, and we were determined to find out if this was true.
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It’s no secret that bloggers love to get free stuff, myself included. For some reason my blog and I have not made it on to the list of “cool people who like to eat yummy stuff and write about it” radar of most vegan specialty companies. It’s always the other cool kids getting awesome stuff in the mail to sample like vegan ice cream, marshmallows, cheese, what have you. I hardly ever get offered anything exciting and it’s a cryin’ shame.

Much to my delight, my run of no free schwag luck changed thanks to Twitter. One of the local foodies I follow on Twitter, Val of food blahg (@myabsentmind) mentioned she was working as a PR rep for a gourmet chocolate company called Xan Confections that just came out with a vegan line of specialty chocolates. Totally as a joke I responded to her with “samples please!”. Imagine my surprise and elation when she responded in the affirmative and asked for an address to send some chocolates to. Amazing… I didn’t even have to beg! (Now before you all start hitting Val up for free candy, realize she’s not Willy Wonka… I don’t think they’re able to give out freebies left & right to the entire vegan universe, I just happened to get lucky asking for the right thing at the right time. You’ll just have to trust me that these chocolates are as profoundly amazing as I say they are, then go support this great company by buying some!)

Right off the bat, let me tell you that these were truly some of the most incredibly delicious chocolates to have ever passed my lips. If I end up sounding a little bit like a commercial from here on out, that’s perfectly alright with me because the world needs to know about these amazing delicacies and I’m more than pleased to be the one to break the news to you gently. While they totally fronted me some free chocolates, no one is paying me for this review and I am raving about these of my own accord (but if Xan Confections for some reason wanted to put my address on their “lifetime of free chocolates for being awesome” award program, I’m totally down).

About the company:

Xan Confections tempt the tastebuds and satisfy the soul. Famed Orange County, Calif. chocolatier Tracey Downey creates indulgent artisan chocolates, caramels, and other handcrafted treats using distinctive flavors and only the finest, all-natural ingredients. Xan Confections’ health-conscious chocolates and caramels are non-dairy, gluten-free, low-glycemic, low-calorie and vegan — but are still as rich and satisfying as ever.

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