If you think you know all about Vanoffee ™, think again! This flavour has been on a heck of a ride to become the bestselling vegan bar!
That’s right, you love it. Everyone loves it, but how did it come to be? What is its journey?
Let’s start by dispelling a myth.
Vanoffee contains no bananas. Shock! Horror!
Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today! © Frank Silver and Irving Cohen
Many people confuse Vanoffee with Banoffee. We’ve even had emails about it (which we always welcome, by the way, love hearing from you!)
Dear Linus,
While I thoroughly enjoyed the Vanoffee bar, deliciously creamy and incredibly moreish, I’m afraid to say I could detect no bananas.
Yours adoringly,
A TRCC Muncher
The reply usually goes something like this,
Dear Muncher,
I am so sorry to disappoint, however no bananas were harmed in the making of my iconic Vanoffee bar. You see, the clever amalgamation of words is Vanilla and Toffee which equals Vanoffee.
Now please do hop over to our blog, where I tell a little story of where it all began….
Yours, whipping up a chocolate storm,
Linus Gorpe : Chocolate Wizard
I Had a Dream
Linus loves looking back on how this trademarked flavour was conceived, born, remade then spawned.
In his own words,
“Vanoffee was dreamed up like this.My girlfriend at the time woke up in the middle of the night with a dream of a recipe to make Goji Fudge. In the morning I ate it, and it was great!
A few days later there was still a bit left which I put in my mouth, to discover it had gone rancid. Yuk!
I then set out to create a similar product with a long stable shelf life.
I removed the Gojis, Agave and the Coconut oil, the three culprits in creating the rancidity. Agave and Gojis contain water, coconut reacts badly with water.
The ingredients left were Lucuma, mesquite and Vanilla.
Basically, just powders. Naaaaa not right.
I knew cacao butter was a very stable fat, so I added that into the mix and played around with the proportions until I got a delicious caramelly toffee like dreamy delight.
This was the original recipe.
A few years later we were told we could not use mesquite because it was such a new ingredient here in the UK (thus supposedly not safe to eat even though it has been eaten for a very long time in Africa) which was a real blow to us as this bar – Vanoffee – was our best-selling product.
However, this is when I then discovered coconut blossom sugar. This worked a treat and even improved the recipe. Yiihaaaa!
A bar was born. "
Today Vanoffee is not just a bar, it’s in button form, it pairs perfectly with other ingredients, such as salted hazelnuts, it drenches whole foods and nuts in our snack packs and it is STILL our best-selling flavour.
How to Play with Vanoffee
It also lends itself well to some awesome vegan recipes, like this Raspberry Vanoffee Cheesecake that looks as good as it tastes.
Like these, frozen Vanoffee ™ bites that are so easy to make.
And if you feel like going way back to the beginning, to the fudge that birthed it all, try this scrumptious Vanoffee fudge and bring somebody else on board.
How ever you love to devour Vanoffee, we’ve got you covered, in Vanilla and Toffee – not bananas!