Vegan Sweets at Stratford Sweet Shop

All very pretty, but which sweets are vegan?

I chose the fizzy cola bottles. Yum!

Last week we had two young relatives staying with us, so we took them to Stratford-upon-Avon for the day. Stratford is great fun to mooch around, with lots of unusual little shops like the Harry Potter-themed Creaky Cauldron, an emporium of all things magic-related, from conjuring tricks to hand crafted real magic wands, a cafe and a museum of magic. There's even a Christmas shop packed full of beautiful decorations all year round! Not forgetting, of course, all the Shakespeare stuff, like the Shakespeare Centre, the house where Shakespeare was born and the RSC's theatre. We parked in a side street just outside the town centre, ate our picnic in the van, walked down Stratford's main street taking in the shop windows, and headed for the river to watch the boats and stroll in the park. 
On the way, we decided to get some sweet treats from the kids' favourite sweet shop, informatively but unimaginatively named The Stratford Sweet Shop. This is what the window looked like, in all its pre-Easter glory:

...Milk chocolate, hand made fudge; surely there would be nothing suitable for us vegans in there? But that's just where I was wrong lucky! I wanted to check that the kids weren't getting anything they shouldn't (like gelatine), so I asked about that, and was told that as well as stocking lots of veggie and vegan-friendly sweets in jars, the fizzy cola bottles were also okay for vegans, being based, like Turkish delight, on cornstarch rather than gelatine, and with no other animal ingredients. I don't know what brand they are, but the other sweets like pips, mega sours and wrapped sweets are made by Barnetts. On checking out the Barnetts website I found the products section really informative, with ingredients given and vegetarian and gluten free options clearly marked. The kids went for mega sours and I opted for fizzy cola bottles. Sorted!

PS: When buying vegan-friendly sweets, do beware of E120, aka carmine, which is made from insects. I have seen a couple of online sweet shops who list certain products as "suitable for vegetarians" yet they still contain this. Yeuch :(

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