I received a funny yet definitely helpful present from my co-worker this year -
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Baking. I'll always be the first to admit that I'm no Iron Chef, so this book was perfect for a beginner cook like me. Everything is simplified and there's a great section in the book about egg and dairy product substitutions.
The first recipes I tried from this book were the recipes for vegan mocha cake and vegan vanilla bean frosting. I think my mocha cake turned into a chocolate cake which was a bit disappointing, but the frosting made up for it twice over. It was the first time I ever used extract from a vanilla bean pod and it made all the difference in the world. I was a little wary at how such a small amount of extract (scraping a vanilla bean pod can get a little sticky) would make the frosting taste better, but now I'm a convert. This frosting was so good because it wasn't too sweet. When I was younger, I was always excited to eat the icing off a cake and get as much sugar as I can into my system, but at some point in my life, I became pretty sick of super sweet icing. So, I was pretty surprised when I found myself actually eating the spare icing I made for this cake.
For my shortening, I used
Spectrum Organic All Vegetable Shortening which I found at Micronesia Mall Pay-Less Supermarket . I chose this because it was non-hydrogenated, and in this
post, I explain why non-hydrogenated products are better than regular hydrogenated products. For my vegan margarine, I just used my trusty
Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread, which is available at both
Simply Food and Micronesia Mall Pay-Less Supermarket. It makes vegetarian life so much easier when products are easily available on-island!
