Vegan Baking

What if you were stuck on a dessert island (get it!?) and the only devices to make your sugar, sand and coconut-laden treats during Valentines day were:

1)
Williams Sonoma Heart Pie Molds These molds cut you pie crust into the obvious shape where you then fill it with pie filling, then fold the other half of the mold over to crimp the whole shebang together befoe baking to a crisp.

By now you know the devastating earthquake in Haiti has plunged the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere into even deeper turmoil than before. They are truly in need of our help. It's up to each and every one of us to step up and use our creative energy to assist the people as well as the animals of Haiti.

Recently it's been shown that vegan bake sales can be a powerful tool to raise funds to assist in the well being of animals. This is always a win win situation because we get our cupcakes and the animals get our help. Well, get your whisks ready and get ready to join your local vegan bake sale for Haiti. The PPK has compiled a nice list of bake sales that's being kept up to date as new ones are being added.

For those in NYC, Supervegan is hosting a vegan bake sale for Haiti during their Vegan Drinks on Thursday January 28th from 7 to 9pm at Angels and Kings. I'll be there selling some eats.

If there's not any vegan bake sales in your area, start one up! There's also several other ways to help.

It's rumored that 25 million Americans suffer from food allergies. That's far more than the number of vegans in this country. Allergies are likely growing faster than cruelty-free cuisine. Heck, peanut allergies have supposedly doubled in the last five years alone. This is why you should put on your apron, grab Cybele Pascal's book, The Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook and explore what she has in store for your tastebuds.

Pascal, who also wrote the critically acclaimed Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook, makes it easy for people with food allergies to have no fear whipping up things like chocolate chip cookies, gingerbread, brownies and pizza. The book also has helpful information on allergy-free baking ingredients and methods to make things as drama free as possible.

The People at Fox Run Craftsmen are making gingerbread house fabrication easier, especially after you've had a few Silk Nog's laced with bourbon. There's no excuse for making a shoddy ginger bread house with their Gingerbread House Cookie Cutter Bake Set. The 10 piece set makes a 8 ½ inch tall house that you can then adorn with your custom icing exterior. Just remember to roll out the gingerbread dough in the cookie sheets before cutting. This way you won't have to worry about transferring them and possibly distorting them. And don't forget that this house is foreclosure proof and edible which is a major bonus.

Not into all the drama surrounding gingerbread house construction? You can also make a Cookie Wreath.

Congratulations to Linda, winner of our Kitchen Scale Giveaway! We randomly used Random.org to randomly choose a random winner. Linda was interested in weighing sugar and now her sugar weighing dreams will finally come true. Batteries included.

When I was little I was obsessed with trains. Right around Thanksgiving I would beg my Dad to bring the humongous board up from the basement with the train set bolted to it. It took up the entire floor and for the next couple months my room was turned into a tiny little town.

I long for those trainset days again but in the meantime I'll be making mine out of the flour and sugar variety with NordicWare's train cake pan. The 5 cup capacity pan makes 9 cars including an engine, tank car, flat car with wood and caboose. Now all I need are some gingerbread houses and some licorice for tracks and my little town will be all set.

Isa and Terry are at it again folks. First vegan cupcakes were taking over the world, now vegan cookies are invading your cookie jar. Is no area safe from the onslaught of baked items? Isa Chandra-Moskowitz, from Vegan With a Vengeance and Vegan Brunch fame and Terry Hope Romero, (whose upcoming solo book Viva Vegan looks interesting), have finally released their highly anticipated new book detailing the ins and outs of vegan cookies.

This book sports more than 100 irresistible recipes for cookies, bars, biscotti, brownies... Or simply tempt yourself with: Magical Coconut Cookie Bars, Chocolate Chip Cream Cheese Brownies, Peanut Butter Crisscrosses, NYC Black & Whites, Key Lime Shortbread Rounds, Call Me Blondies, Macadamia Lace Cookies.

They also go through cookie baking techniques so that baking disasters don't invade your kitchen. Here's to seeing way more vegan cookies in the world thanks to Isa and Terry.

Brace yourselves for the influx of vegan baking cookbooks hot off the presses this holiday season. VegNews has stepped into the kitchen and produced their first vegan baking book aimed at arguably the most scrumptious vegan baked eat, cookies! (because cupcakes are so last year). Holiday Cookie Collection has the deets on delights such as orange-chocolate macaroons, spicy gingerbread, and pecan-pie truffles...Toasted Almond Toffee Bars and fresh, minty Candy Cane Whoopie Pies.

It's only $3 for it's glittery bunch of pixels. Put that in your kindle and smoke it. Actually, don't because this eBook only requires a computer to search it's sugary goodness with maximum ease. Save yourself a couple hundred bucks, pass go, and get your Chipmunks record ready.

Flying Apron, Seattle's best known vegan, gluten-free bakery, was started by Father and daughter pair, Bill Dowd and Jennifer Katzinger. They had a common insterest of increasing the amount of organic foods and enviromnemtal sustainablility in the world through artisan baked eats. Much of that baking knowledge has now been bound into Jennifer's new book, Flying Apron's Gluten-free & Vegan Baking Book.

In the book Jennifer divulges many of her favorite dishes and gluten-free baking secrets. The book also includes over 80 recipes for mouth watering delights such as scones (plus their signature flying aprons), muffins, cookies, pies, cakes and cupcakes, frostings, breads, soups, turnovers, and potpies. Recipes include Buckwheat Flying Apron Biscuits, Cardamom Spice Cake, Polenta Cannelli, Bean Torte with Caponota, and Ginger Wheel Cookies. Our appetite just arrived and we're ready to go!

Why make your Pumpkin Spice Bread in a boring old loaf pan? It deserves better. That pumpkin didn't slave over becoming a pumpkin all summer only to be baked into a brick-shaped bundle of puffy goodness. Show your pumpkin-based sweetbread some respect and bake it in the Wilton Pumpkins Mini Cake Pan.

This mold is designed to bake eight halves of pumpkin sweetbread. You then remove them from the mold, cut off the tops so they're flat, frost them and sandwich them together in true whoopie pie fasion. If you wanted to get all sneaky you could even scoop out some cake and fill it up with Pumpkin Pudding. How'se that for a tricky treat?

Get ready to make some stunning vegan desserts because Sharon Valencik has just unleashed Sweet Utopia. Her cookbook consists of "a collection of unique vegan recipes that Sharon has been developing over the last several years, captured by Milan’s stunning images."

We're excited that her husband Milan, a professional photographer among other things has helped her show how great these desserts can be. We can't wait to get our paws on a copy. You can get yours here.

Few things are better than throwing a pie into the fall potluck festivities. Few things are worse than carrying your pie on the subway/cab/bike and having it leak an oozy death forcing you to make excuses when you unleash it on your friends. Let's not even mention that shady stain on your groin. Thanks to the people at Nordic Ware, this is all changing with their Covered Pie Pan. It's an aluminum pie pan which arguably helps crusts turn out crispier than glass or ceramic pie pans due to better heat exchange. It has a plastic cover that not only reduces spillage but helps keep the pie fresher longer so you don't have to eat the pie in one sitting cover it with plastic wrap for later. Our friends and our jeans will thank us later.

Kris Holechek, author of the fabulous Nom! Nom! Nom! Blog has just come out with her second vegan baking book, The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes. The book "features alternatives for favorites like cupcakes, brownies, and chocolate chip cookies while also offering treats such as lime coconut bars, blueberry streusel muffins, and rosemary focaccia."

We're excited that it has a mixture of classics and new takes on desserts as well. In 2007 Kris self-published her first cookbook, The Tasty Guide to Vegan Baking which planted the seed for what was to become her latest book. We can't wait to whip up some Lemon Drop Cookies. The book is available here.

Get ready for Fall, aka 'Baking Season' folks! This means baking, apple picking, pumpkin patches, more baking, leaves turning, cooler weather and more baking. Williams Sonoma can start you out this with some Fall themed pocket pie molds. These molds come in apple or pumpkin shape and make individual pies for your buffalo plaid-flannel-clad loved ones. Use one side to cut the pie shape and the other side swings around to crimp the pie shut. You can make lots of these with different pie recipes and deep fry freeze them for later use. Not into molds in the shape of apples or pumpkins? They have them in hearts and stars too. Not into individual sized pies? Sorry but individual sized is all the rage right now. Stick with them at least until buffalo plaid is out of style.