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.