One milk to rule them all.
One milk to rule them all.

KaiJuly 5, 2019

Ranking dairy-free chocolate milks from dirtiest to creamiest

Contributing writer
One milk to rule them all.
One milk to rule them all.

After a few months of tasting and testing, Alice Webb-Liddall ranks dairy free chocolate milks, because we all deserve a good drop of cool cocoa without the animal element.

My mother always insisted on buying me a chocolate milk after every game of high school netball. “It’s scientifically proven to refuel your muscles better than Powerade or water or anything else,” she told me every Saturday morning for years.

It might be the reason why I’m still a sucker for a choccie milk, especially on Saturday mornings (though usually now as a hangover cure rather than a sports day treat). But when you grow old like me, at the frail age of 21, you begin to realise that your stomach might not like the cow juice as much as you thought, and your Saturday morning hit of cocoa becomes more and more painful.

So the journey of exploring New Zealand’s growing collection of dairy-free chocolate milk available in dairys, supermarkets, petrol stations and speciality stores began. After a few years of searching, I feel educated enough to now share my thoughts with the people, so here is my ranking of dairy-free chocolate milks*, from worst to best.

Not all are pictured here because I couldn’t find them all when I was taking this photo, okay?

7. Covet Macadamia Milk Chocolate Milk

Price: $6 for 1 litre

‘Oooh, macadamia milk!’ I hear you say. Be careful where you aim your excitement though because while this looks like a nice dark chocolate brew, it tastes like sweet dirt. It’s no peasant’s nut, the macadamia, and it was a first for me trying its milk. But after this one, I don’t think I will again. A disgrace really.

6. Vamino Chocolate Soy Milk

Price: $1.29 for 300ml

It’s concerning how much this one separates in the bottle, and more concerning that it doesn’t mix no matter how hard you shake it. Luckily the weird brown blobs don’t affect the mouthfeel, which is pretty creamy. More of a malt-chocolate taste, like a soy milo drink, than a chocolate milk, and probably fine warmed up. But I didn’t try that so if it’s not good warmed up, fight me. It’s also the only chocolate milk I’ve ever had that you need a bottle opener for, which is quite annoying and meant I had to make an additional trip to the kitchen.

5. So Good Dark Chocolate Almond Milk

Price: $4 for 375ml

So Good’s Vanilla Bliss is my ultimate holiday treat, and I was looking forward to their quite recently released chocolate flavours. Unfortunately, I’m not a fan. It’s sweet enough and has a fine consistency (a little on the watery side) but that’s to be expected from almond milk. My main qualm is that they’re not chocolatey enough at all. Gimme a good hit of cacao or I don’t wanna hear about it.

In case you are a method snob, I used fresh cups for each sample.

4. Vitasoy Soy Milky Chocolate Milk

Price: $3.79 for 1 litre

Look, it’s a bloody bargain so I feel like I can’t complain too much about this one. It’s a lil bit creamy, a lil bit chocolatey, and a lil bit up my alley. Not offensive, not expensive, not amazing. But ultimately, I’ll buy this again because my chocolate milk budget is small.

3. Little Island Coconut Chocolate Milk

Price: $8 for 1 litre

This was the only response I got when I asked on Instagram what the best no-dairy choccie milk was, and frankly, I’m sick of it. I tried it for the first time and despite trying to hate it, I thought it was really yum. It’s pricey AF but if you can afford it, I think it’s earnt the praise it’s been getting.

The issue with coconut milk is that it likes to announce itself, and I found with Little Island the first taste was coconut with the chocolate as more of a follow-up act. It also leaves a slight oily film in the mouth. So if you’re not into coconut, this ain’t the one for you. But it truly is a creamy morsel and deserving of a podium finish.

2. Vitasoy Almond Chocolate Milk

Price: $3.30 for 330ml

I didn’t think an almond milk would rate this highly until I tried this one. Somehow the usual watery consistency of almond juice has been replaced with a creaminess I didn’t think could happen. It’s not as creamy as Little Island, and technically pricier per litre, but it was perfectly chocolate and perfectly sweet and I want another bottle.

1. Vitasoy Soya Milk Drink – Chocolate

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Price: $9.00 for a six-pack

A workmate brought these in the other day from their trip to Mercury Plaza in Auckland, and it was everything I have ever needed from a chocolate milk. It’s a post-netball Primo level sip: creamy, rich, no weird soy aftertaste. They’re the most expensive on the list because I think you can only buy these babies in a six-pack in New Zealand, but it’s the best dairy-free chocolate milk I’ve tasted. They’re also not easy to find, so Google some local Chinese supermarkets if you want to wrap your mouths around one.

* There are definitely more dairy-free chocolate milks out there, but this was what I could find.

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alex (34)

KaiJuly 4, 2019

PSA: Don’t look for lunchbox ideas on Instagram

Guest writer
alex (34)

Adding to the negative impact that Instagram is already having on mental health and body image, a set of unrealistic standards for school lunchboxes is unearthed by Juliet Speedy. 

If I was asked to offer my most valuable piece of culinary advice to parents, it would be this: don’t Google “lunchbox ideas”. In fact, if you want to hold yourself up as a caring caregiver with moderate cooking skills, don’t you dare plug #healthylunchbox into Instagram.

I find lunchbox packing pretty bloody arduous. The day-in-day-out task of trying to come up with new, yummy, diverse ideas to please three “starving” kids (their word, not mine).  Hard to be starving when you have an all-day buffet at your hands. Talk to any parent, whether a keen cook or not, and they will be capable of whining at length about food preparation. 

There is no holiday from providing food for your offspring. The consequences can be, well, not ideal. Children need feeding – regularly – and they are often fussy as all hell and will critique you in far more certain terms than the team from Michelin. 

But in terms of lunchboxes, I thought I was doing pretty well. I love cooking – food is my thing. I can whip up a tomato and basil baguette for the three hungry nippers in no time. A weekly batch of homemade but slightly tasteless muffins. A mandarin one day, a granny smith the next. Get me with my rolled up salad wraps (a god soggy mess come lunchtime). 

But then one winter’s day, sick of packing the same shit day in, day out, I started looking online for ideas. And, well, I shouldn’t have.

 According to the internet, there are many parents that spend their Sundays making hummus spiked with kale and Swiss chard, carving carrots into bunny rabbits and planning themed lunchboxes around special days. 

“Go the thanksgiving lunchbox! Naturally coloured red, white and blue home fermented sauerkraut!”

“Check out my cheese souffle modelled off Donald Trump’s hair #voterepublican”

“It’s Halloween, Araminta is enjoying my freshly made spider shaped sushi. I even harvested the seaweed myself!”#cookswhoforage

Some of the bento boxes on Instagram look more like computer-generated images straight out of Silicon Valley. I’ve seen cucumbers with sculpted faces, fritters fried into the shape of twin ballerinas and entire edible scenes recreated from Star Wars. I’ve honestly seen rice ball cow faces and forests made from cherry tomatoes, edamame beans and baby corn.

I couldn’t put my children’s lunchboxes on Instagram. I’m not sure the budget brand wholemeal bread complete with crust is wildly photogenic. Or the container of rice crackers I managed to find for $1.50 a packet. My pesto comes in a jar. I made kale chips once but I put so much salt on them to make them taste good they were more likely to give my five-year-old a heart attack than a nutrition hit. 

You can tell some lunchbox geniuses are actually child-free food writers with no bloody idea. They will tell you to marinate the artichokes overnight for the vegetable medley frittata with green tomato salsa and promise it will be a “big hit with your little ones”. The reality is it will come back not only rejected but also lining the entire inside of my child’s school bag and probably dribbling down their back. 

And then there are the lectures: Don’t do this and don’t buy this. Make everything from scratch. That muesli bar will turn your child’s body into a chemical shit storm. We know those yoghurt pottles have more sugar than ice cream, and the preservative list in that “fruit” snack could help make an atomic bomb, but sometimes it’s what you’ve got to do.

It’s not just lunchboxes either. There are actual humans who turn every meal they make for their child into a full-blown artistic creation. I often find it hard to get time to roast a chook long enough to stamp out the salmonella. But some parents find the time to turn their children’s fillet steaks into a sleeping tiger lying on a green polka dot blanket (dehydrated spinach and black sesame seeds, naturally).

Don’t get me wrong. Who doesn’t get satisfaction out of seeing their kids eat yummy and healthy food? And when we get time to sit down ourselves, us parents can rejoice in creating and eating it too. But I can’t replicate Matisse out of tofu. And I’m pretty sure I’m not poisoning them with an inorganic grape.

Kai