Vegan Baking

Apple Turnovers are perhaps one of the rare baked treats that suit the season any time of year. Perhaps the sweet, gooey apple paired with buttery, flaky puff pastry being one of the ultimate flavor combinations is why. This vegan treat would hit the spot on a cold winter morning, a hot summer day, or as a midnight snack. Put leftovers in the toaster oven for a few minutes to make them taste like they just came out of the oven. For the ultimate dessert, top it with some vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce.

I'm obsessed with baking because unlike traditional cooking, there are nearly no limits or boundaries to creating completely new forms of food. Effectively harnessing your imagination is the only truly required skill. Developing this skill, as well as understanding the fundamentals of baking allows you to create true art forms. Then you get to eat them.

Puff pastry is a truly remarkable building block for vegan baking because of it's versatility. It can be the basis of anything from flaky layers enveloping fruit, coiled into rolls such as sticky buns, or twirled into cinnamon and sugar twists.

Referred to in France as pâte feuilletée which means 'pastry made leaf-like', puff pastry is made of several hundred alternating layers of dough and fat. The water in the dough produces steam during baking that separates and lifts the layers into the puffy goodness that we know and love. This steam-assisted lift is known as chemical leavening. Puff pastry often gets a bad rap due to the many steps of preparation involved. Puff pastry can be a truly time intensive endeavor- if you let it. I recommend splitting the preparation into little pieces and working at it a little bit at a time over a few days. This way you'll only spend a total of about an hour on it. You also have the option of making your puff pastry and storing it in the freezer for a special occasion or for that day when you can no longer resist some sticky caramel cinnamon buns.