Homemade Vegan (copycat) Chocolate Bars
Nearly all our commercial snack bars are owned by Mars, one of the world’s biggest food companies. It owns everything from Wrigley’s chewing gum (full of littered pet-toxic xylitol) and other chocolate bars (Milky Way, Bounty) to most of the world’s pet food market. And even Dolmio watery pasta sauce (American, not Italian). Nestle also owns a few popular brands, like Kit-Kat.
But it’s pretty easy with a bit of know-how to recreate nearly all the popular brands, and no plastic packaging, refined sugar, palm oil or animal ingredients.
These vegan Twix bars (Rainbow Nourishments) are quite simple, to make although you do need a few ingredients. Ideal for the creative or ambitious chef, or professional cook to master! It’s easy to replicate most common chocolate bars, you just then create plant-based versions (there are oodles of recipes on the Web).
Keep these bars away from pets, chocolate is not safe around animal friends. Read more on food safety for people and pets.
This recipe creates a shortbread biscuit base using flour, coconut sugar and vegan butter (Flora has no palm oil), then tops with a gooey caramel made with vegan condensed milk, and tops with vegan chocolate.
Like most commercial chocolate bars, Twix is made with dairy (and likely from factory farms) and wrapped in plastic (chocolate and sweet wrappers are one of the most littered items in England). They are also pretty expensive for two bites of snack – around £1.
In February 2025, a litter-picking volunteer discovered a Twix wrapper priced at 13p, with a ‘best before’ date of August 1984, in Teeside’s River Leven. He said that the find was ‘pretty depressing’ but not uncommon saying ‘you name it, we’ve found it’. When approached, a spokesperson for Mars Wrigley said it had implemented ‘clear disposal messages’ on its products.
Other Good Vegan Copycat Chocolate Bars
These healthy vegan kit-kats (Happy Vegannie) are simple to make, wafers covered in chocolate. A few years back, there was a TV ad campaign, asking the brand not to put palm oil in its Kit Kats (it was quite gruesome, the office worker snapping off a wafer and finding it was the finger of an orangutan).
Kit Kat obliged thanks to consumer pressure, and removed palm oil. Now (just a few years later), it has quietly added it back, even in the vegan version.
Snickers Bars (Ela Vegan) coat a caramel peanut nougat in chocolate coating.
Bounty Bars (Ela Vegan) are simple: coconut and chocolate!
Mars Bars (Addicted to Date) are almond nougat and caramel in chocolate. And if you’re feeling ambitious, also try Christina’s vegan Mars ice Cream Bars!
Homemade Vegan Ferrero Rocher
These homemade vegan ferrero rocher (Happy Vegannie) look and taste the same, but with far less plastic packaging! The company has been told off for wrapping individual chocolates in plastic, then in plastic again.
And despite the ‘you spoil us, Ambassador’ image, the ingredients are pretty poor (refined sugar, milk solids, palm oil etc). It’s all marketing.
