Some Thoughts on Baking Vegan

Here's a post from Morgan!

For me one of the hardest hurdles to overcome with becoming vegan is how to replace my desserts. I can do a lot of things when it comes to eating vegan meals because it is actually not that different from eating as a vegetarian but baking is always a challenge. There are several reasons for this for me personally, namely that I am a self-proclaimed “stress-baker.” It is exactly what it sounds like, whenever there is something going on in my life that I can’t cope with in my usual head-on manner I bake, a lot. Often to the enjoyment of my friends, family and co-workers, I also bake in great quantities. Unless you were raised by vegan parents (which I certainly wasn’t), you tend to understand baking as something that should include things like milk, eggs and butter. Normally one would think that my stress-baking would come in handy with finding vegan recipes for things like cookies, and brownies, and cakes…you get the picture. The problem is that I have found on various occasions that vegan baking is not always the same as the kind I grew up with and tends to taste like paste. This is a problem because I cannot eat great quantities of paste by myself and I refuse to feed it to anyone else (that would be cruel). I am not someone with a great deal of spare time but hopefully if anyone faces the same problem as me the trial and error experiment I am planning to embark on will be of some help. Basically I will be reviewing vegan baking recipes through trial and error whenever I get the chance and posting the results.

`I haven’t put a lot of research into this so far but I have found one recipe for brownies that is amazing. To see the original go to: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=6640.0 but I have made some alterations to it based on personal preference and included some extra info in brackets that hopefully some will find helpful.

Ingredients

1. 2 cups flour
2. 1 cup water
3. 1 cup brown sugar
4. 1 cup granulated sugar
5. 1 teaspoon salt
6. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
7. 3/4 cup baking cocoa
8. 1/2 cup vegetable oil
9. 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
10. 1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
11. 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat to 350°F and grease 11x7” pan (does not have to be this size, my 8x8” works fine, as long as it is similar in size it will work). For those who don’t know what works as vegan pan grease see note at the end. Boil water and ½ c of the flour over low heat and stir to remove any lumps of flour. The original says to just let it form a thin paste but I let it thicken and to me it tastes better so I will let you be your own judge of how thick you want your binding agent to be. (It also says to let it cool, it is not cool by the time I have to add it but that doesn’t make a difference). In a separate bowl mix ingredients 3-8. Add the flour and water mixture and stir it in. Add the rest of the flour and the baking powder and whatever optional ingredients you like (½ c is a recommendation as long as the combined mixture of your extras doesn’t exceed 1c it will still be a brownie, don’t turn it into a chocolate binding agent for various sugary junk). Put it in a pan and bake for 25ish minutes. Baking time varies depending on how hot your oven gets so just insert a knife at the 20 min mark and if it comes out clean it is ready, if not then try again for another 5 min etc. The consistency of your flour-water paste will also determine how hard it is to get the final mixture to fit in the pan like a brownie but that’s what spatulas are for!

Note: if you don’t already bake with spray-on pan grease you can try that. I have never used it so I can’t offer any insight as to how effective it is. What I do is take a piece of paper towel and cover the top of my vegetable oil with it, turn the whole unit upside-down for a second and then use the oily paper to grease the pan. If you find this solution odd try it before you knock it. 

I have come to the conclusion that this recipe is all sorts of fantastic because it is so forgiving of my style of baking, and probably various others. Also…there is an amazing chocolate goop that goes really well with this but I am currently lacking the recipe for it. I will pester until I get it so that should appear on the next post.