End-of-January Update

This week, I made my first experiment: meringue cookies. I only made one batch, but I should have made more, for reasons which will become apparent. Meringue has two main ingredients: sugar and egg whites. Therefore, I had to substitute fully half of the recipe. I had read a few articles that said that the packing liquid from a can of chickpeas works well as a frothy egg replacer, so that is what I used. I used approximately the same volume of "aquafaba" as I would to egg whites, and added 1/4 cup of sugar for each. I whipped the mixture for several minutes. It became frothy, but did not stiffen enough to make structurally sound cookies. I added 1/4 teaspoon of cream of tartar (a stiffener) for good measure, but it did not do much. Then I realized the conversion ratio for aquafaba is more like 3 Tbps per egg, and added more. When that didn't work, I added more sugar. In the end, the mixture stayed stiff enough to make cookies that looked like cookies and not a puddle, but not airy enough to be proper meringue.

From this experiment, I learned that I really must make multiple batches to compare results. Also, I learned to triple-check the directions before beginning. In future, any questions I have about tweaking amounts of ingredients will defer to recipe commentors, who have already experienced making the recipe and tend to offer good advice. My meringues were not successful (they did not have the required "fluffiness"), but they did taste quite good (although, being mainly sugar, this is not unexpected). For next week, I will be a little less ambitious and bake a simple cake. If that cake is successful, I will attempt to make a lava cake. But first, I should probably finish these meringues...

Week 2 Update

I've taken a sort of stepping stone towards baking this week, and some inspiration fell into my lap. First, I made seitan, or mock chicken (something I've never done before). The basic ingredients are gluten and vegetable broth, and so I've created a sort of cooking/ baking hybrid monster with my bread/"meat". The seitan turned out decently (good flavour, though too chewy) and it gave me the confidence boost I needed to begin baking properly. The inspiration came last night, as I was eating out in a restaurant, and had black forest "cheese"cake for dessert. It was delicious, just like a high quality cheesecake, and my dining partner agreed. It was, however, $9 per slice, and I have resolved to make a not-cheesecake part of my repertoire. Today, I did some preliminary research and read a few recipes for vegan cheesecake. One I dismissed out of hand because it called for vegan sour cream (which is terrible), but the others looked more reasonable, and had few (8-10) ingredients. So far I haven't encountered any particular difficulties, but I also haven't yet begun my experiments, with their capacity for utter disaster. In the next few days, I will begin to amass the ingredients I will need throughout the project. My concrete step for next Genius Hour is to try my hand at meringue cookies: very simple, with only two ingredients (sugar and eggs/something to fluff said sugar up), and I will do some research to decide what the best method of fluffing might be.

Hello all! Welcome to my blog, where I will be exploring a topic I have begun to learn about, but am still in the beginning stages. The question I will try to answer is as follows: "How successfully can I adapt variously complex dessert recipes to be vegan?" My ultimate goal is to become more comfortable baking; I used to bake cookies and muffins often (with varying degrees of success) but since becoming vegan I've played it safe, not making anything more complex than chocolate chip cookies. I will base my progress on three criteria: whether I enjoy eating what I've made, whether my willing human test subjects enjoy it, and how similar my creation is to what I am trying to emulate. The most important criterion is of course my own personal enjoyment, but since I really want to challenge myself, the similarity factor is not far behind. I will make several simpler desserts, as well as at least three of the following: meringue cookies, soufflé, crème brûlée, "proper" Danish pastry (à la my great-grandmother), lava cake, baked Alaska, Aebleskiver (Danish doughnuts), and/or some sort of candy. Some, or perhaps all, of my experiments will be utter disasters. But no matter what the result, I'll almost certainly enjoy the experience.