Vegan Baking Classics: Delicious, Easy-to-Make Traditional Favorites

By Kelly Rudnicki

This comprehensive cookbook features vegan baking recipes, tips, and techniques for home bakers of all skill levels.
 
Vegan Baking Classics is a one-stop guide to delicious, everyday baked goods free of animal products. With these simple yet satisfying recipes, you can enjoy freshly baked muffins, quick breads, cookies, and bars, as well as cakes, pies, crisps, and cobblers—all made with ingredients that are affordable, widely available, and fully vegan.
 
Whether bakers are new to the world of veganism or a veterans with years of experience, they will find plenty to enjoy in Vegan Baking Classics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781572846692

Book preview

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Introduction

Baking isn’t a necessity, but it fulfills an important need for most of us. It helps connect us to childhood memories of pulling up a chair to the kitchen counter and helping our mothers stir chocolate chips into the cookie batter. The scent of freshly baked treats in a kitchen reminds us of something delicious and wonderful; it warms our hearts and bellies. There’s a reason why coffeehouses always stock an assortment of scones, muffins, and cookies; people love to sit down and enjoy something sweet with a cup of coffee or tea.

The basics of good home baking usually require few ingredients: butter, eggs, milk and flour. But those who want or need to eliminate these dairy and egg ingredients from their kitchens have often been left with subpar recipes that result in dry and tasteless baked goods. In fact, many vegan baking recipes don’t taste like the real thing at all. This book, Vegan Baking Classics, is about to change all that.

I started baking without dairy, eggs, or nuts seven years ago, when my oldest son was diagnosed with life-threatening food allergies to dairy, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, and legumes. One bite of any of these ingredients would have put his life at risk, potentially sending him into anaphylactic shock. Out of pure necessity, I had to eliminate these ingredients from my family’s diet in order to keep him safe and alive. Learning to bake dairy, egg, and nut-free was a daunting task at first, but I desperately wanted to create the same baking memories for my children that I remember from my childhood. I went on a mission to find the perfect cake, cookie, and muffin recipes.

My search took me to every vegan and food-allergy book on the bookshelf. Many of my early efforts were complete disasters—they didn’t taste anything like I had remembered. I quickly realized that I had to create my own dairy, egg, and nut-free recipes that tasted like the real deal. Years of trial and error have yielded the very best recipes for classic family favorites, including pumpkin bread, banana–chocolate chip muffins, chocolate chip cookies, apple cinnamon doughnuts, chocolate cake, apple crumb pie, and more.

These recipes were originally developed for my first book, The Food Allergy Mama’s Baking Book, which quickly became a favorite among people who follow a vegan diet. I’ve received countless e-mails from vegans who find my recipes to be simple, inexpensive to prepare, and taste even better than treats made with butter, cow’s milk, or eggs. I’m a busy mother of five young children, so it’s important that my treats use ingredients I already have on hand in the pantry. Most of my egg substitutes rely only on water, vinegar, or perhaps a little silken tofu. My substitutes for cow’s milk are soy and rice milks, which are readily available in any grocery store. There’s no need to shop for other expensive egg and milk substitutes in specialty food stores. Who wants to waste the time and money?

I am certain you will love my favorite dairy and egg-free baking recipes as much as my many vegan readers already have. I’m sure Vegan Baking Classics will become one of your most frequently used baking books.

Happy baking!

PART ONE

Vegan Baking Tips and Advice

Top Dairy and Egg-free Ingredients

As a mother of five young children, my daily life is far too hectic to spend all day shopping for exotic ingredients. Besides, the cost to feed those five little mouths increases every year (especially since they keep getting bigger!), so I’m not about to spend a lot of money on egg substitutes and fancy organic products. I pick and choose where I spend my money. Here’s a list of favorite ingredients I use in all my recipes:

NIELSEN-MASSEY PURE VANILLA EXTRACT. Nope, this isn’t necessarily inexpensive and easy to find in your local supermarket, but the quality can’t be matched. Don’t go cheap with your vanilla. Always make sure you get the good stuff. You can find it at Williams-Sonoma and Whole Foods Markets.

GOLD MEDAL UNBLEACHED ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR. I prefer using the unbleached version, because it’s spared the additional chemical processing of bleached flour. You can find it at your local grocery store.

DAIRY-FREE SHORTENING. I highly recommend Earth Balance Natural Shortening or Spectrum Organic Shortening.

DAIRY- FREE MARGARINE. Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks are a fantastic substitute for margarine and are dairy and egg-free.

DAIRY, EGG , AND NUT-FREE CHOCOLATE CHIPS. In the world of dairy-, egg-, and nut-free baking, there are only two commercial brands I turn to for chips: Divvies and Enjoy Life. I searched high and low for a totally safe chocolate chip and was always stopped in my tracks by that shared equipment disclaimer. Either the dairy-free chips I found were produced in facilities that also produced nut-containing products, or the chips from nut-free facilities contained dairy. Divvies is a wonderful company that is dedicated to providing dairy-, egg-, and nut-free sweet treats, including cookies, caramel corn, and candy. Its chocolate chips are larger and similar in size to traditional chips. Customers can order a large (5–pound) bag of chocolate chips from the Divvies Website. Tropical Source by Sunspire and 365 brand (Whole Foods) vegan chocolate chips are other good chocolate chip options.

UNSWEETENED APPLESAUCE. You’ll notice I use a lot of applesauce in my recipes because it gives just the right amount of moisture to cookies and muffins. Only use unsweetened applesauce in your recipes, because the sugary versions will add too much sweetness to your baked goods.

VINEGAR. Plain white vinegar is a great egg replacer and can turn ordinary soy milk into buttermilk (see page 12).

SILKEN TOFU. Tofu is one of my favorite choices for an egg replacer when my baked goods need more density. I prefer Nasoya brand silken tofu.

TOFUTTI DAIRY-FREE SOUR CREAM AND CREAM CHEESE. For recipes with cream cheese as a main ingredient, I use Tofutti. It tastes great and has a rich, thick consistency.

Top Baking Hints

MAKE SURE YOUR OVEN IS ALWAYS PROPERLY PREHEATED, AND GET AN OVEN THERMOMETER. I’ve given general time recommendations in the book, because some ovens are hotter than others. Buy an oven thermometer so you’ll know where your oven’s hot spots are.

MEASURE FLOUR AND OTHER DRY INGREDIENTS PROPERLY. Baking is a science, so it isn’t wise to just wing it, throwing a little of this and a little of that into your recipes. Measure flour and other dry ingredients by spooning them into measuring cups and leveling them with a straight edge (the reverse side of a spoon works fine). Doing so ensures you are getting the most accurate measurement possible. The exception to this rule is brown sugar, which is always pressed and packed into a measuring cup.

ALWAYS USE A CLEAR GLASS LIQUID MEASURING CUP FOR LIQUIDS. Pour the amount needed into the measuring cup, and bend down to carefully check that the liquid reaches the proper level and the measurement is exact.

NEVER MEASURE INGREDIENTS OVER YOUR MIXING BOWL. The last thing you’ll want to do is pour too much salt (or anything else, for that matter) into a measuring spoon and have it overflow into your bowl of measured ingredients.

SCRAPE THE BOWL OFTEN AS YOU MIX INGREDIENTS. I’ve made the mistake of not scraping the bowl regularly as I blend ingredients together, only to find clumps of ingredients