Vegan Baking

Your baked items are only as good as your ingredients. I'm unaware of a single case where this isn't true. It's one of the reasons I stopped using tofu in my recipes years ago, although there are certain rare occasions where it shines. Plain yogurt provides a great way to add complex flavor and introduce mild binding properties to your recipe. It's not going to bind as much as an egg, but in things like cakes, pancakes and sweetbreads you don't need powerful egg replacers anyway. Read on for my review of the top four plain vegan yogurts currently on the US market.

Silicone baking products are starting to infiltrate the kitchen at an astonishing pace. I remember the good old days when we had to walk in the snow for 13 miles, uphill in each direction to find paper to make paper mâché food molds that would catch fire in the oven. It would bind to our food and we'd go "oh no, there's paper in my food". That's the way it was and we liked it. Now we have a variety of silicone cookware options from spatulas to baking sheet liners to... chocolate molds.

Silikomart has introduced silicone chocolate molds to make light work of your chocolate truffle making endeavors. Read on to see how well they fared.

Whip cream is frosting's long lost cousin. This is a good thing because it's enabled us to top everything from pies to ice cream to cake with it's creamy goodness. Sensing a vacuum in the vegan whip cream space since Hip Whip disappeared from the market (RIP Now and Zen), Soyatoo has stepped up to the plate with Rice Whip and Soy Whip. These vegan whipped creams give you no excuses to leave any tastebuds behind in your quest for the ultimate desserts.

I tested this whip on some Pumpkin Cheesecake to see how it stacked up. Is it worth it's compressed nitrous oxide? Read on to find out.

We're finally in the age where there's an increasing number of options when it comes to vegan food products. Back in the day we used to have to forego cheesecake or take matters into our own hands if we decided to eschew animal products. Then Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese came out and everyone rejoiced because they could finally have cheesecake and New York style bagels that were easy to make and didn't suffer from flavor compromises. But then a huge Doh! moment occurred. It's chock full of trans fats! Toffutti answered the call with Better Than Cream Cheese Non-Hydrogenated. Other companies are now following suit with their own vegan cream cheeses such as Follow Your Heart Cream Cheese Alternative. Which of the lot is recommended for your cheesecakes this season? Read on to find out.

Pie crusts are simple but vulnerable to many different variables that can cause failure or lackluster results during baking. The crust is the frame of your pie so it's important that it comes out as perfect as possible. I recently had a Trader Joe's pie that had such a poor, mealy crust that it disracted from the rest of the pie.

When making pie crusts, there are several things you can do to ensure it comes out as perfect as possible such as using ice cold water, margarine in stick form instead of tub form due to it containing more saturated fat, etc. Another often overlooked crust trick is the use of a pie weight.

Around 150 years ago it became cost effective to mass mill grains into the shelf stable product we know of as flour. Since this time, a host of health related anomalies have been occurring in the United States. The beginning of the mass production of food is regarded as marking the beginning of the Standard American Diet, or more appropriately named, the SAD diet. These health issues are likely caused by products containing flour and sugars that, after they're quickly digested, turn into a flash flood of sugar that our bodies aren't capable of handling multiple times a day. To reduce having major health issues later in life, we'd like to remind you that highly processed foods should be enjoyed in moderation. When you're not overindulging in desserts, It's a good idea to eat natural food that is minimally processed and provides consistent energy without spiking your blood sugar. Luckily, this can be done while still eating amazing food. Enter Manna Bread.

Sometimes I don't know what I like better: cookie dough or freshly baked cookies. Recently I picked up a 12 oz. tub of Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies from Emily's Desserts and found myself in the same conundrum. Emilys basically giving you no excuses for easy access to vegan eats. Don't feel like eating a ginormous store-bought cookie? Fine. Don't feel like going through the rigamarole of baking a batch of smaller cookies? Alright. With Emily's Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough you no longer have any more excuses. Read on as we put them through their cookie paces.

Many people these days have difficulty finding time to make their own food due to busy schedules. Homemade food tends to taste significantly better than store bought food because store bought food usually sits on the shelf losing it's freshness for days or weeks. By the time it gets to your mouth it's sometimes gotten a little bit stale. Food manufacturers often compensate for this by adding ingredients to improve freshness which also can have the side effect of changing the taste or mouthfeel of the food slightly.
In attempt to create the taste of a homemade cookies without the hassle of making them from scratch, Moo-Cluck offers Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough for your hungry hearts. Read on for our complete review.

These little beauties were picked up recently at the local health food store. Actually they weren't little by any means, measuring about four inches across. They're from Cindy Klotz Productions which is a secret vegan cookie lab located inside a volcano guarded by unicorns. Ok, we just made that last part up. But there is no website info on the cookie and we're a little dumbfounded as to where to find more information about these cookies. A website that made us feel all warm and snuggly while at the same time describing their cookies would be a great place to start. Update: Cindy Klotz Productions now has a website!

When it comes to things like pizzas, it's  a good idea to increase the fun factor by topping it with some vegan cheese. Vegan cheeses have improved vastly over the last decade and it's often difficult to keep up with the latest offerings. We've always wondered how vegan cheeses would fair side by side in regards to flavor, meltiness and overall authenticity. In this review we'll show you how well these cheeses faired in those regards and let you know which topping came out on top.

I used to think that ice cream scoops were kind of a joke. Why not just use a spoon and run it under warm water before for the best scooping action? That's all fine and dandy if you just want to get ice cream into a bowl. There's something to be said about presentation though, especially when it comes to desserts. As humans, we're very visual when it comes to interpreting things like food and this does make a difference with how food is percieved. You might only be concerned with getting ice cream into your mouth with the least amount of effort but if you're interested in making the best possible eating experience then it's a good idea to pay attention to your visual presentation. Also if you frequently serve ice cream, convenience is key. When it comes to ice cream this is where the Zeroll Original Ice Cream Scoop comes in.

When was the last time you had a really good candy bar? I mean to the point of where it rivaled an artisan chocolate? When I heard about these my initial thoughts were that it was great someone had finally started making candy bars without all the space age ingredients and animal by products- but they would still probably taste just like the candy bars they were trying to duplicate. I would then be back to square one. Wasn't one of the hidden benefits of veganism being that you didn't have to worry about accidentally eating two snickers bars at one sitting? Boy was I wrong about that assumption.

For years I used a spatula with a plastic handle. One day the handle broke in half and I figured I'd have to buy a new one. I found that the half-length handle spatula was actually pretty cool! It allowed me to get into large jars and blenders with the maneuverability of a Yamaha RZ350. It puzzled me as to why it was so hard to find different spatula options. Today I stumbled upon the Isi Silicone Scraper Spatula.

These were awesome! They consist of a layer of graham cracker crust with a thin layer of peanut butter topped by a marshmallow then covered in a thin layer of dark chocolate. The graham cracker crust fell apart a little too easily but luckily it was still anchored to the smore by the peanut butter layer. The marshmallow part was very well done- if you fed this to a non-vegan they wouldn't consider it being vegan for even a second. Every bite results in getting all of the layers which was great, and who can go wrong with peanut butter, marshmallow, graham cracker and chocolate?