All posts tagged: chocolate

#90 – Nice lunch at Vegaverso, Louvain (3)

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Restaurant review #90 – Vegaverso is a vegan lunch bar in the city center of Louvain. Vegaverso serves mainly sandwiches, burgers and also some hot dishes like stews or pasta (the menu varies). We’ve been here a couple of times before, and impressions from some of those visits can be seen here (#27) and here (#34). Vegaverso is a lovely charming place, soberly but stylishly decorated, with a relaxed atmosphere. Service by Tilly and her mom is always super friendly. It’s semi-self service: you order at the bar, take your drinks with you, and when your food is ready they bring the order to your table. Our you can also buy to take away. update – see below  — The menu is pretty extensive, with several burgers, wraps, hotdogs to choose from. Also many different vegan sauces, and different types of bread. The combinations are endless! Also a great variety of vegan pastry and cookies. And the menu changes every once in a while too, so there’s always something new to try. We visited Vegaverso again in July for lunch. This is what we had: …

#72 Vegan icecream (and more) at Bar Italiano, Ghent ***

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Restaurant review #72 – After our lovely lunch at saladbar Zukini in Ghent (see my review here), we went to Bar Italiano for a vegan icecream. It is only a 5 minute walk from the Overpoortstraat. This was a bit of a trip down memory lane too, as this was the neighbourhood where we lived a couple of years as students! There were three vegan ice-cream flavours: chocolate, speculoos and mint. The ice-creams are homemade and based on rice. I went for the chocolate and mint, my friend for the speculoos and chocolate (2€ for a scoop of ice cream, so this totalled 8€). I had already tasted this icecream before, at Vegan Summerfest in 2015 (see our blogpost with the review here). And it’s really good! Afterwards, we had some tea. There’s a nice selection of teas to choose from at the counter. (2,50€ or if you combine it with an ice cream only 2,30€). There are always vegan options available at Bar Italiano (eg pastas) and on Thursday vegan specialties (like vegan lasagne). The owner was very friendly and seemed very …

A look inside vegan shop and café VegaBond in Amsterdam (NL)

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Shop review #18 – Vegabond is an all vegan shop at one of the canals in Amsterdam. It’s not very big, but packed with vegan goodies! Mainly food items, and some books too. Here are some photos to give you an idea of what’s on sale at Vegabond in Amsterdam: You can also order some food, either to take away, or to enjoy there. There aren’t that many seating places though (just a couch and one table), so don’t expect a restaurant style setting. I can imagine that at lunchtime, all the places are taken. We didn’t order any food at vegabond, since we had lunch that day at De Vegetarische Traiteur (about a 10 min walk from vegabond) but this is the menu that was available the day we visited: Limited seating places: You do have a nice view at the typical houses along the canal: If it was closer, I surely would have bought some icecreams to take home! Great selection! I bought some kala namak = black salt (had been looking for this for some time!) and this …

Vegan chocolates with mint filling: Bendicks Bittermints

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A great find at British store Stonemanor in Everberg (in between Brussels & Leuven). Dark chocolates with mint filling! It has been ages since I’ve eaten after eights, and these come pretty close! The filling is not as smooth as after eights though, and the chocolate is crunchier. The Bittermints have a very strong mint taste. Lovely! The ingredients list does not mention any animal ingredients, and Bendicks list these Bittermints as suitable for vegans. Bendicks Bittermint 1 box with 22 chocolates 14,50€ bought at Stonemanor, March 2015

Vegan cuberdons or ‘neuzekes’

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I had been quite a while since I last ate cuberdons. They are a typical Belgian candy, cone shaped, and called ‘neuzeke’ (a little nose). The artisanal ones are supposed to be vegan, but they are often also made using gelatine and non-vegan colouring. Confisserie Jonas, a vegan chocolatier from Oudenaarde makes vegan cuberdons! I was very happy to read they would be become available at resto Vegaverso in Leuven, as we had a trip to Leuven planned. Luckily, the cuberdons had just arrived the day we were in Vegaverso! vegan cuberdons 1 bag with 10 cuberdons, 5€ bought at Vegaverso Leuven, March 2015

A look inside vegan shop V|edge in Ghent

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Shop review #11 – V|edge is an all vegan shop in Ghent. It is located at the edge of the city center, near Sint-Annasquare. The concept store in Ghent is only open in the weekend, but you can also order online and have your shopping delivered at home. V|edge also delivers your shopping to delivery points in several cities, among which Bruges. Check their website for details. UPDATE: see below V|edge offers a variety of vegan products: vegan shoes, handbags, books, vegan cheeses, cookies, candy, energy bars, burgers, chocolate, and other goodies. It is a rather small shop, but they have many items that are otherwise no so easy to find in Belgium. We are not really into ‘meat or fish substitutes’ (the vegan scampis or burgers type of things). But because we hadn’t tasted Tofurky nor the sausages from File Roast yet, we bought some of those (the jury is still out on those, more about them later). Also some products from Gardein. We were very eager to try out the vegan cheese croquette’s from YASAI! V|edge’s homebrand though. Already tasted and much approved, …

A visit to shop Flourpower in de Artemeersmolen (mill), Poeke

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Shop review #10 – In our search for vital wheat gluten (or gluten powder, to make our own seitan, more about that in another blogpost), we found Flourpower, a small shop inside the Artemeersmill at Poeke. Poeke is a rural village between Tielt and Aalter, 39 km from Bruges. The shop has a great selection of flour mixtures, and some other bakery stuff.   This is what we bought: groats of soy, 1kg, 2,35€ chocolate chips, 1kg, 7,30€ vital wheat gluten, 5kg, 13,70€ 10 grain meal, 1kg, 2,10€ Very happy to have found the gluten powder. I bought a 5kg bag, but they also have smaller amounts available. I have no idea yet what I’m going to do with the soy groats, but I was so intrigued by this (and hadn’t seen it before in any shops), I just bought it. I’m sure I will found some good use for it. If you have any suggestions, let me know! The 10 grain meal also mentions vitamine C and enzymes among the ingredients, and the shop owner confirmed they …

Vegan chocolate cream

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This is a very simple and straightforward recipe for chocolate cream. You can use it as topping for cupcakes, on top of pies, or in smaller portions as a dessert on its own. And it’s without refined sugar, you can choose between maple syrup or agave syrup, whichever you like best! Important though is that it requires advance preparation. That is, it needs some time in the fridge to set. At least half an hour, but better still an hour is best to make it stiff, espcially if you want to use it for cupcake topping. Silken tofu is very smooth tofu. It is much softer and ‘creamy’ than regular tofu. You can easily cut regular tofu into cubes, this doesn’t work with silken tofu. In Belgium, I’ve only seen it available in organic shops. Ingredients vegan chocolate cream 1 package silken tofu (400g), drained of excess liquid 1/4 cup soy milk 2 tbs agave or maple syrup 1 ts vanille extract 12 ounce (370g) vegan black chocolate chips Preparation Crumble the silken tofu in a blender. …

Our blog The Bruges Vegan is one year old!

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A year ago, between Christmas and New Year at the end of 2013 we started this blog The Bruges Vegan. Wow, already a year, it’s a cliché, but yes, time flies. – – Since the start at the end of 2013, we published 72 blogposts. Nearly half of those posts are restaurant reviews. Wow! Didn’t think that in one year time I would have written 32 restaurant reviews! I hope to write at least as many in 2015, cause that means we would discover lost of new places to eat out! 🙂 Luckily our lists of restaurants where vegans are welcome in Bruges and around Bruges is still growing, and we are gradually adding new entries (suggestions are always welcome!). – We got to meet many other (vegan) bloggers, from all around the world! A great community, so much things to discover, so many recipes to try! I also found many lovely blogposts showing tourists’ impressions from their visit to Bruges. It’s nice to discover the city through the lens of visitors. We also get positive feedback from visitors through e-mails, telling us they found our …

shop Antwerps Kookhuis, Antwerp

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Shop review #5 – Looking for a special silicone baking mold? A set of professional kitchen knives? A juicer, blender, coffee machine or other kichen tools? Antwerps Kookhuis is a shop I like to visit whenever I’m in Antwerp. I’ve found many items here, that I haven’t found in other cooking shops in Belgium. From the outside windows the shop doesn’t look very big, but inside you encounter many different rooms, packed with baking and cooking material. They also have a large selection of cook books, but hardly any vegan cookbooks (that would be my only minus about the shop 😉 Some more photos from Antwerps Kookhuis: On my last visit, I bought these items: molds for chocolates (each 7.95€ and one 11.95€) and a muffin plate with bundt shapes (34.95€): Antwerps Kookhuis is about a 15-20 minute walk from the city center (City Hall – Cathedral). Antwerps Kookhuis, location Terninckstraat 1 2000 Antwerpen 03/226.98.98 See our list with shops, which may interest vegans