30 Vegan Candy and Chocolate Bar Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What candy is 100% vegan? ›

Most dark chocolate is vegan, as are popular sweet treats such as Smarties (known as Rockets in Canada), Oreos, Airheads, Jujubes, and Swedish Fish (some Swedish Fish contain beeswax, so be sure to check the label).

Fruity Sweets: Many fruity sweets, such as Skittles, Starburst, and Sour Patch Kids, are vegan-friendly. Hard Candies: Hard candies, such as lollipops and candy canes, are often vegan-friendly.

Sour Patch Kids are vegan friendly as they are made with organic sugar, so no bone char is used when refining the sugar, and they do not contain any gelatine.

Milk products are the primary reason for M&M's not qualifying as vegan, and this goes for any flavor variation of M&M's… including crispy M&M, peanut butter M&M, peanut M&M, and even dark chocolate M&M's (bummer).

Beer and Wine

Isinglass, a gelatin-based substance derived from fish, is used as a clarifying agent in some beer and wine. Other non-vegan ingredients sometimes used are casein (from milk) and egg whites.

Are Reese's Peanut Butter Cups vegan? Because they're covered in milk chocolate, the original Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are not vegan. However, a new dairy-free, oat-based version of the recipe, called Reese's Plant Based, was released in 2023 (more on that below!).

Lindt Excellence 70% Dark Chocolate

Lindt Excellence is pretty excellent chocolate (I always used to steal squares of it from the fridge when my mum wasn't looking) and it's pretty naturally vegan, too. The ingredients of these bars include cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, and vanilla.

Hershey's Plant Based Oat Chocolate Almond Bar. Hershey's Plant Based Reese's Cups.

Can vegans eat Starbursts? Not the regular ones. “Most Starburst candies, including its classic fruit chews, are not vegan because they contain animal-derived products such as confectioner's glaze (made from the secretions of lac beetles) and gelatin (an ingredient sourced from collagen found in animal bones).”

Fortunately, loads of candies are vegan, so we can indulge our cravings (mostly) guilt-free. Most dark chocolate is vegan, as are popular sweet treats such as Smarties (known as Rockets in Canada), Oreos, Airheads, Jujubes, and Swedish Fish (some Swedish Fish contain beeswax, so be sure to check the label).

Are Kit Kats vegan? ›

Are KitKat^® 4 Finger White Chocolate bars suitable for vegans? Unfortunately, our KitKat^® 2 Finger White Chocolate bars are not suitable for someone who follows a vegan lifestyle. You can now enjoy a Vegan break with KitKat^® V, our first plant-based break. Find the full list of products suitable for a vegan diet here.

Laffy Taffy is vegan when it's fun-sized.

The fun-sized versions of Laffy Taffy candies are vegan-friendly. But, be cautious with the larger version, it is not vegan because it contains eggs.

No – tootsie rolls aren't vegan. They have milk in them, so they don't pass the vegan test. Though there are many companies that label their products as vegan, not all products do, so sometimes it can be tricky to tell whether something is vegan or not.

As long as there is no milk on the ingredients list itself, it is considered by most to be vegan. Oreos are therefore, for the most part, perfectly vegan-friendly by most people's definition.

What is a vegan product? A product is vegan if it does not contain any animal extracts or animal by-products in the product or manufacturing process. It also means that the product hasn't been tested on animals. To be sure, look for the Vegan Trademark.

By standard definitions, regular Sour Patch Kids candies are vegan because they don't contain animal products. However, the sugar in all of the Sour Patch Kids candies was likely, at least in part, processed with animal bone char. That may be reason enough for some vigilant vegans to abstain.

The highest percentage of dark chocolates are vegan, as they won't have any milk products added to them. Chocolates that are 100% cocoa are certainly vegan as they won't have anything else besides chocolate matter.