This Vegan Candy Bar Is Better Than Reese’s Cups
Gigantic
Whenever I tell someone that I don't really like Reese's Cups, they tend to take personal offense or, better yet, embark on a quest to convince me otherwise. I respect the impulse––candy bar preferences are deeply personal at best and irrevocably polarizing at worst. It's the sort of thing that can really derail an early stage friendship or seriously damage credibility for, say, a young Associate Restaurant Editor. However, I'm here to come clean and say that I've found my new favorite candy bar; she's vegan, and she only has seven grams of sugar. Meet Gigantic!
Gigantic Variety Pack
Salted Peanut, Banana Pecan, Hazelnut Cafe, and Almond Horchata.
$28 at giganticcandy.com
I'm not the first to acknowledge that when it comes to candy, "vegan" and "low sugar" tend to be trendy code words for "disappointing stand-in for the Snickers bar you actually want to be eating." That said, biting into a Gigantic! almond horchata bar (my favorite of the four current flavors) tastes exactly like the refreshing summertime drink with almonds, cinnamon, and dark chocolate swirled in. There are no alternative sweeteners in these treats—just fair-trade chocolate and 100% plant-based ingredients.
On hot days, I'll pop one in the freezer to enjoy later in place of a scoop of coconut-based ice cream. The complexity of flavor fills in for the absence of extra sugar, a trade I'm personally happy to make because the experience ends up feeling less like a candy bar and more like a sit-down dessert. Similarly, the banana pecan bar tastes much more like an actual muffin (you know, if muffins could be encrusted in a dark chocolate shell) than something you'd grab in the grocery checkout line. It's a new way of thinking about what we're looking for out of ye olde candy bar, and frankly, I'm pretty excited about it.
