There’s just something about buttery shortbread that’s otherworldly. How does that rich, savory-sweet, toastiness, sweep into your palate with buttery wave after buttery wave? How does it exist with such a crispy texture? That snap when you bite into it unleashes a lingering aroma that takes over you and lets you know that you’ve arrived. Everything is going to be okay now. As long as you don’t hog all the shortbread.I’m pretty picky about my shortbread. I believe it should be a celebration of the flavor of butter. Any other flavors present need only be there to play a supporting role. As you bite in, it should yield with a snap and infuse the senses with buttery richness. But this is vegan baking. How do you do all these things as well as showcase butter?
Leveraging toastiness can be a powerful tool for creating rich, complex flavors. Toastiness is often defined in dictionaries as “comfortably or cozily warm”. I think it’s pretty cool how this definition describes the actual food flavor so spot-on. When you combine toastiness with coconut, you’d better watch out; you’re in for a burst of rich toastiness with a lingering creamy coconut finish that can fade into maltiness. Perfect for kicking your vegan baking up a notch or three!Why confine toasted coconut to coconut flour? By making coconut milk out of toasted coconut flour, we’re able to apply this rich, complex creamy toastiness to a much wider array of vegan baking applications. Ice creams, cakes, puddings, cream sauces, pancakes; any food that uses a large proportion of liquid can take advantage of toasted coconut milk in place of regular non-dairy milk. You can even put it in your breakfast oatmeal where it’ll add a rich, savory maltiness. But how does this flavor come to be?
Shortening definitely has its place in vegan baking. From pie crusts, shortbreads and puff pastry, it’s a basic building block for texture. This solid fat is so integral to these types of desserts because it alters the way gluten is formed in baked items that utilize wheat-based flours. For more on the food science of shortening, check out my article on how to make vegan shortening.My original recipe for vegan shortening utilized a mixture of coconut oil and vegetable oil such as canola, light olive oil or rice bran oil. The coconut oil is solid at room temperature. When it’s mixed with a certain ratio of fats that are liquid at room temperature, a certain level of softness can be dialed in that makes it suitable to use as shortening. This recipe utilizes deodorized, also known as refined cocoa butter.
I've gotten into the habit of using various Vegan Butters in my baking projects. I like having the peace of mind in knowing I have complete control over what goes into it. These butters were designed to mimic real butter. But lately I’ve been noticing something. The same hard consistency that allows the butter to work well with creaming into cookie batter, cutting into pie crust dough and rolling with croissant dough can also be its downfall.This firmness inhibits the butter from being enjoyed on a completely different level: being spread onto toasty pieces of hearth breads, smeared on steamy biscuits and dabbed on pancakes fresh off the griddle. In these cases, butters that are optimal for baking tend to sit on the food, desperately depending on the residual heat to allow them to melt so they hopefully spread out as they ooze along. Then while you’re eating, hopefully you’ll eventually get to the part with the melted butter on it. What a treat that’s going to be! It shouldn’t have to be this way.
The term vegetable oil can sometimes conjure up images of generic, flavorless, lifeless oil derived from some unknown plant product using some secret, questionable industrial method. Maybe you’ve seen it, in the baking aisle of the major supermarket contained in a thin plastic bottle sporting a drab logo that hasn’t been updated since at least the early 80s. Yuck. It just makes you want to shudder. What is that stuff?
Sometimes you just have a recipe that you like. You grew up with it. Like the teddy bear that accompanied you through the thick and thin of your youth, certain sweets have always been there for you to bring you up when you’re down, celebrate your milestones and bring you and your friends together. They’re almost a part of you. You have a subconscious bond with these types of foods because you identify with them, they make you feel good and they define part of the personal culture that is you. This is part of the definition of comfort food.But now you’re vegan and that german chocolate cake that your grandmother bought you up on is strictly verboten by the vegan police. Or it might not be, but you’re trying to eat less of it as you transition your diet to one that involves less animal products. You could just find a cake that’s been designed to be vegan from the ground up, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to measure up to Grandma’s cake. What a crisis! What are we going to do?
Coconut is one of my favorite ingredients due to its neutral flavors that add richness to almost anything. Coconut contains flavor compounds called lactones that are among the same flavor compounds that give traditional dairy cream its trademark creamy flavor. And we all wondered why coconut and cream went together so well! In this Toasted Coconut Cake I wanted to maximize these layers of coconut and cream for a truly decadent cake.
What I like best about Vegan Butter is how it can be crafted to meet your exact flavor and texture specifications. Since we’re building butter from the ground up, we have the freedom to use building blocks that contribute almost any quality we desire. In that roughly 80% fat and 20% water, we have lots of room to play around. For this version I wanted to showcase the unbelievably smooth, savory flavors of truffle oil for a Vegan Butter that could stand up to traditional dairy-based butter as a bread spread, or even quite possibly outdo it when baked into pastry such as savory pie crusts. But why are we infusing vegan butter with truffle oil? Let’s get some background information on what truffle oil brings to the table.
“I’ve never had a black and white cookie before” I mumbled to my vegan food friends, not thinking that it was that big of a deal. “Living in New York City, you’ve never had a black and white cookie?!” they desperately exclaimed. Right then, I perked up. What is it about these flat perfectly looking cookies that straddle the line between black and white so mysteriously? After all, this is New York City’s cookie. Does this cookie dare to celebrate chocolate and vanilla at the same time? What about the cookie part? Is it just a boring pseudo shortbread crust underneath or something special? I had to know more.
I decided to assemble Team Coconut: an all-star team of players dedicated to bringing in some serious coconut action. Like a Quiet Riot - Bang Your Head (on the Coconut) remix. Based on my Vegan Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, Vegan Toasted Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies boast toasted coconut flour, unrefined coconut oil, coconut sugar and shredded coconut that toasts during baking. Let’s do this.
I love how green tea has a subtle ability to refresh coupled with a slight hint of savoriness. I adore how vegan cupcakes can be a celebratory canvas for almost any flavor combination, that you get to just pick up and take a bite out of. But how do you infuse green tea into a baked cake product? Easy, right?
This Easy Vegan Buttercream Frosting is just a simple, versatile, delectable frosting that will elevate your cakes and cupcakes to a new level without requiring you to put on your lab coat and don your frosting goggles. You can either use Regular Vegan Butter with a cocoa butter base which is recommended, Regular Vegan Butter with a coconut oil base, or, if you haven’t gotten around to buying a walk-in freezer to store your Vegan Butter in yet, go the easy route and use store bought stick margarine.
