Vegan Baking

Vegan Baking Is The Healthier Choice

2009-11-24T10:49:00.000-08:00

Desserts are full of sugar. Plain and simple, but with vegan baking you get the health benefit of replacing the fatty and cholesterol laden animal ingredients with much healthier options. Eggs are the biggest problem in traditional baking and have vegan options that are incredibly healthier. Imagine how much better you'd feel if you were able to replace an egg with things that are as healthy as bananas and flax seed, all without a loss of taste or texture? That's exactly what you get to do with vegan baking!

To further justify this point, let's compare two pecan pie recipes.

This recipe from About.com uses:

9" pie shell
2 cups small pecan halves
1/3 cup butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 tablespoon vanilla
1/2 cup large pecan halves

Whereas, this vegan pecan pie recipe uses:

2 1/2 to 3 cups of lightly roasted pecans all chopped up (more or
less depending on how you like the consistency)

1/3 to almost a 1/2 cup of rice syrup (though agave syrup and barley
malt ain't to bad)

3/4 to 1 cup of Maple syrup (more less depending on the amount of pecans)

1 tbsp to 1 1/2 tbsp of alcohol free vanilla extract (just prefer the flavor)

Grated ginger to taste 1 tbsp to 2 tbsp

salt couple of pinches or so

1 1/2 to not quite 2 tsp of Arrowroot (tried using corn startch not so good)

3 to 3 1/2 tbsp of flax seeds ground up as best you can

1/3 to 1/2 cup of soy milk

As you can see, the vegan recipe uses no refined sugar (but it's not even close to low sugar) and ground flax seed to replace the egg. I had the "traditional" recipe years ago before becoming vegan, and now I cook the vegan one every Thanksgiving. There is no loss in taste, and I actually prefer the texture of the vegan one.

Dessert is rarely healthy, but you can save yourself a lot of crap by baking vegan!

The Joy Of Vegan Baking

2009-11-24T10:42:00.001-08:00

The Joy Of Vegan Baking is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks (vegan or not). The thing that makes it different from most vegan dessert cookbooks is that it does its best to replicated the original "traditional" recipes. That means that you're going to need a lot of sugar and faux butter on hand to cook through the book.

What makes The Joy Of Vegan Baking even better is that it's not just desserts. There are fantastic recipes for pancakes, waffles, snacks, and breads that fill out the first third of the book.

A tip for you if you have this book, or are looking to buy it, when baking the pancakes allow the batter to sit on the counter for 5-7 minutes after everything has been mixed together. The extra time on the counter will allow more gluten to form in the mix and cause your pancakes to be fluffier. The mix will make four good sized vegan pancakes when portioned out with a 2 oz. ladle or a heaping half cup.

This cookbook is absolutely fantastic and I recommend it to anyone who is vegan or loves baking. There are so many things that you can do that you may just become vegan!

Vegan Cupcakes

2009-10-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

Vegan cupcakes are one of the greatest things ever. They have more taste and are better looking than their con carne counterparts. Without the gross egg taste they can have much more overall flavor. You end up tasting all of the different parts of the mix, rather than egg.

In my opinion, vegan cupcakes are a huge part of what has made baking cool again. They're easy, and they're trendy, and they're delicious. That's the perfect mix for something to become extremely popular. Cookbooks like Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World are also written in a way that appeals to a younger crowd. It has much more attitude than the Joy Of Baking, or any other lame cookbook that your grandma loves.

There really aren't any "traditional" cupcakes that can't have a vegan counterpart. With things like faux-cream cheese you can even do fluffy frostings and filled cupcakes.

All of this talk about cupcakes is making me hungry. It's time to get in the kitchen and start baking!

Vegan Eggs

2009-09-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

One of the first things that you have to figure out when you're beginning vegan baking is what to do without eggs. You'll also get this question a lot when "traditional" bakers want to figure out why your cupcakes taste so much better than theirs!

The thing with vegan egg replacers is that it's not a one thing for every application type of deal. In most cases, the Ener-G Egg Replacer will work great. You find this in any health food store, or at Whole Foods. Ener-G is a powder, that looks a lot like cornstarch, that when mixed with water creates a gel-like mix that works great. Many cookbooks recommend that you mix it up in the food processor, but when you're only making enough to replace one egg, the blade of the food processor isn't low enough to mix everything and it doesn't work well. If I'm baking cupcakes, or anything with lots of wet ingredients, I'll mix the egg replacer first in the wet ingredient bowl with a small wisk or a fork. From my experience, the vegan egg has to be mixed on its own for good results.

There are other egg substitutes, and each has it's own specific uses. In most cases, you can use a half banana for one egg. This works best in banana nut bread (for obvious reasons) but you're never going to get the same fluff that comes from egg. You'll be able to improve the flavor a ton, but the texture is going to suffer a bit. Ground flax seed also works well as an egg replacer, as does soft tofu, but these only have limited uses.

Vegan Baking

2009-09-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

I'm vegan and I love baking! There are many different ways to go about vegan baking and I hope to share many of those techniques with you on this blog.

In my opinion, vegan baking tastes better than traditional baking does. The reason for this, I believe, is that you don't have to battle with the taste of the eggs and milk to get to the flavor of the cake or cookie. This holds especially true in cupcakes. Their pure flavor really shines through. I've heard stories of vegan cupcakes winning baking competitions multiple times, and it doesn't surprise me a bit!

Baking is once again becoming the cool thing to do. Shaped cake pans are popping up in stores all over the place, and people are designing their own cupcake stands. I like to try and stay ahead of things a bit, and being vegan and loving to cook has led me to a new passion for vegan baking.

I really can't tell you where this site is going to end up. It might be full of recipes, it might be full of tips and tricks, but for now I just want to get it started and introduce myself!