Replacing the traditional chocolate, ham roast, and cake to have a vegan-friendly Easter is easier than you think. Here’s our vegan guide to Easter 2021.
While parades and egg-rolling might be called off this Easter Sunday, lunch can still take place from the safety of our homes. From breakfast to dessert, here is a round-up of the UK’s top vegan-friendly Easter products.
Hot cross buns
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Hot cross buns, sweet buns with raisins and topped with a cross, are traditionally eaten on Good Friday but can make for a quick and simple Easter breakfast. While they’re best eaten fresh from the kitchen, it’s super easy to swap out the traditional buns for plant-based ones from your local supermarket.
Marks & Spencer
M&S’s Plant Kitchen Luxury Hot Cross Buns are packed with dried fruits and have been blended with avocado purée and coconut oil to achieve the perfect fluffiness. With an addition of lemon zest and spices, these vegan-friendly hot cross buns are truly luxurious. Each pack of four is priced at £1.65 and can be found in-store or online via Ocado.
Full disclosure: these luxury hot cross buns do contain palm oil, which might not align with every vegan’s ethics.
Read about the wildlife and environmental consequences of palm oil.
Asda
Asda’s Free From Hot Cross Buns are both vegan and gluten-free, enabling people with all dietary requirements to indulge in a warm, doughy breakfast on Easter Day. Each £2 pack comes with four buns. They are available in all Asda supermarkets online and in-store.
Waitrose
Waitrose’s Essential Hot Cross Buns are both affordable and tasty. The simplicity of the ingredients means the buns are all taste and no fuss, and are accidentally vegan. Each pack of four is sold for £1 and can be bought online and in Waitrose supermarkets.
Plant-based ham roast
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We all need something ‘meaty’ to tuck into at the dinner table this Easter, whether you are vegan or not. Luckily, a surge in meat alternative availability means replacements are easily found on supermarket shelves and online.
Love Seitan
Love Seitan’s plant-based roast was a popular choice for Christmas last year, but it’s perfectly suitable as a replacement for roast ham during Easter lunch. Using seitan instead of ham gives you the same texture and sense of fulfillment, but cruelty-free.
This particular roast uses rosemary and sage, which matches well with vegan gravy and roast vegetables. Each 1kg log, which can feed up to six people, costs £14.95.
Vbites
The Vbites Meat-Free Gammon Roast pairs affordability and health with your main alternative this Easter. Priced at £4.29 per 390g pack, which can feed two people, the meat alternative uses wheat gluten and soy protein to achieve a succulent and rich flavour, nicely paired with classics such as chips and mushy peas. If, for some reason, you can’t finish the entire pack — Vbites recommends slicing up the roast and putting it in a sandwich on Easter Monday.
Tofurky
Tofurky’s ham roast uses a mix of both tofu and seitan to achieve the pinnacle of all meat alternatives. This particular roast contains hints of smoke and sweetness, and is slathered in an amber ale glaze, which even the biggest meat fans won’t be able to resist. Unfortunately for those outside the US, Tofurky is based in Oregon and this particular roast can only be bought in the US. But maybe that’ll change soon.
Colomba cake
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A tradition in households across Italy for centuries, the Colomba is a dove-shaped brioche cake, known as Panettone’s little sister. Unfortunately, the traditional recipe calls for eggs and milk. And as much as home baking is fun, we don’t all have time to make a fully-fledged plant-based Colomba this Easter.
Here are three companies making our lives easier:
Mindful Bites
Mindful Bites’s Vegan Colomba Dove Double Chocolate Cake is just as indulgent as you might think. While traditional Colomba cakes contain sugar, almonds and candied orange — this one goes one step further by being coated in chocolate flakes, with chocolate chips mixed in the batter too. This cake is not only vegan, but palm oil- and GMO-free too.
For those who live alone, or only have one person to share dessert with this Easter — the cake has a good shelf life and can be left in your cupboard until the end of July. Each Colomba can be bought online, contains 20 servings and is priced at £16.99.
Evvivo
Evvivo’s Colomba with Extra Virgin Olive Oil is a slightly healthier take on this traditional dessert. Although the recipe contains dashes of olive oil instead of butter, it will still satisfy those with sweet cravings through the additional citrus peel and sugar crust. Each cake weighs 500g and is sold online for £12.99.
Vergani
Vergani’s Vegan Colomba Cake is available online through the Italian pesto and pasta sauce brand Saclà. While this cake is slightly pricier than the other options (£20 for 750g), Vergani is renowned for its high quality, century-old products — and this vegan take on Colomba is no exception. With this, what you see is what you get: a traditional colomba coated in sugar, with strong notes of almond and vanilla.
Chocolate liqueur
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Easter is all about chocolate, but no festive lunch can be complete without a source of alcohol — especially if these two are mixed together.
Besos de Chocolaté
Besos de Chocolaté’s Creamy Brandy and Chocolate Liqueur blends brandy and horchata with chocolate flavour. Containing an alcohol percentage of 18% and no nut, dairy, gluten or soy allergens at all — this is suitable for the entire (over 18) family. This will go well with the Colomba, or as a substitute for your Easter egg.
Godiva
Godiva’s Dark Chocolate Liqueur takes unsweetened dark chocolate, black cherry, and candied sweet orange peel and matches them with hints of cold-brewed coffee. It’s like drinking a caffeinated black forest cake. Godiva recommends storing this 15% ABV liqueur in the freezer and serving it with its own dark chocolate truffles. Its website also lists a selection of recipes that you can experiment with using the liqueur.
Hotel Chocolat
Hotel Chocolat’s Cocoa Gin is nowhere near as decadent as the other options, but with the company’s reputation for high-quality chocolate, and the level of booziness (40% ABV) in this drink, this makes for a lighter, slightly stronger alcoholic experience. This cacao gin pairs well with tonic water and a slice of orange — just like regular gin. The recipe has won three stars at the 2014 Great Taste Awards and the World Gin Awards in 2019.
Creme eggs
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Finally, an Easter day in the UK cannot be complete without creme eggs. Until Cadbury launches its own vegan alternative, however, we have these companies to treat us instead.
Mummy Meagz
Mummy Meagz’s Chuckie Egg is a classic. It uses the same sweetness as the traditional creme egg, but this is embraced by a thick dark chocolate case, which any sweet-toothed vegan might need. The palm-oil free product also contains no extra additives and comes in bundles of six for £12.99.
Lagusta’s Luscious
Lagustas Luscious’s English Cream Egg uses “truly ethical chocolate” as its main ingredient, alongside sweet buttery cream in two different colours. Each product is sold in bags of four, which are priced at $10.00 and the company says it’s the chocolate shop’s all-time bestselling item.
