— Diane Dankert

So black licorice typically is used from the black licorice or it's used from a licorice root, right? So the licorice root is very, very bitter. Um, so you usually need to pair it with some sort of sweet and then a binder to combine the two. So like a black licorice root, um, you know, or black licorice rope is typically the root, like some sort of binder, like a gelatin or maybe a flour or something like that. And then a sugar, like a lot of sugar to be able to offset the bitterness of the licorice. Um, now if you're looking in something in that flavor profile, there might be something like you said, I think, you know, having um, prunes that have been coated with fennel is great. You know, like fennel anise, those are great kind of substitutions for licorice. You can still go with the licorice root though. Um, but you, for a whole food plant-based, you wanna switch up what you're using for your sweet. Usually it's a granulated sugar or something that will melt away and that you won't be able to see it all. That's gonna be a little harder with whole food plant-based. You might want to think of either dates or prunes would be a good one as well too. You could do apricots a lot of different things like those as well. And then you're gonna have to experiment with a little bit to see how much licorice root to that dried fruit you're going to use. And then I would recommend blending them all together. You end up with a kind of a paste to be able to do that. Now the nice thing is you're not gonna need as much of a binder if you're using the dried fruit like that because the dried fruit will help stick the licorice root together. Then you can form it into the shape you want to. Now typically it won't, like if you know, like a licorice root, uh, or a licorice, you know, um, like stick kind of thing where it's kind of bendy and you can flop it around like that, you wouldn't be able to do with that with a dried fruit and the licorice unless you did something like an agar agar, um, which would help kind of bind that all together. It's a replacement for gelatin that's a vegan, um, you know, can be a whole food plant based as well too. So, um, you know, it's a little bit of experimentation there. But if you're looking specifically for a substitute for black licorice, I would stick with the licorice and then, um, you know, the prunes would be nice 'cause it'd keep the color if you're looking specifically for black licorice. Um, and then blend those up to be able to get the flavor profile you're looking for. Now you can do it as little as just those two ingredients, um, but again, it's not gonna have the same texture. A little bit of salt in there might be able to increase the flavor of those two. Um, you don't have to add the salt to it, but then think about a binder at the same process, um, and sticking with a whole food plant-based binder if you can.