Get-Real Vegan Desserts: Vegan Recipes for the Rest of Us. William Maltese

tub of heaven combines tofu, soybean oil, locust bean, non-dairy lactic acid and other ingredients to produce a passable vegan alternative to cream cheese. Tofutti also offers a blend without hydrogenated oils.

      Another vegan cream-cheese alternative is Vegan Gourmet Cream Cheese Alternative® by Follow Your Heart®. At about the same price as Tofutti’s product, Vegan Gourmet boasts a higher percentage of organic ingredients and zero hydrogenated oils.

      Sour Cream Alternatives

      Like its cream cheese cousin, vegan sour cream has come a long way in taste, consistency, and texture. Some of our favorites are Tofutti Sour Supreme® and its non-hydrogenated counterpart, Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream®. Again, Vegan Gourmet® also makes an excellent, mostly-organic competitor.

      Our personal preference is for convenience, and in Christina-Marie’s part of the country, Tofutti® products are easier to come by than Vegan Gourmet®, so she uses the former most often. Both brands are comparable in cost, and the added bonus of organic ingredients in Vegan Gourmet® products is certainly not snub-worthy.

      Milk Alternatives

      If you’re allergic to soy, you’re reading the wrong book. We use soy milk and soy-based dairy alternatives at every turn. That being said, if you have a preference for non-soy milk, feel free to experiment with nut milks, like cashew or almond, or grain milks like rice or oat. Also, we’ve heard of bakers getting good results with hemp milk, but it’s not readily available and can be expensive, so we haven’t experimented much with that one.

      The primary variable in milk substitutes that will enhance or destroy a recipe is “body.” That is, how watery is the milk, and how will it affect baking time or measurement? A bit of trial-and-error will answer these questions. Baking times may need to be increased for milks with less body, and measurements may need to be decreased for thinner milks when adding them to frostings or sauces.

      In creating these recipes, we’ve used Silk® Vanilla Soymilk; full-fat, because Christina-Marie is genuinely comfortable with the size of her present “caboose”. Silk® is widely available at most retail locations, is non-GMO, and it does come in a lower-calorie “light” variety. Again, a bit of adjustment may be necessary in some recipes, if you opt for the light version.

      Yogurt Alternatives

      Good soy-based yogurts provide body, a smooth consistency, and that famous yogurt “tang.” We use WholeSoy & Co.® vanilla soy yogurt, because it’s available in an economical, 24-ounce size at our local grocery stores, and it’s non-GMO verified. Other vegan soy yogurts are produced by Nancy’s®, and other companies.

      Be careful in selecting your soy yogurt to ensure the cultures are not grown in milk, as some companies—who shall, for purposes of this book, remain nameless in their non-vegan shame—use milk-grown cultures, added to a soy base.

      Egg Alternatives

      There are a ton of “make your own” egg replacer recipes out there. Some call for flax seed, some call for agar agar, and still others call for fruit or combinations of multiple ingredients.

      In our experiences, none are as reliable in baking as a powdered egg replacer, which takes over both the binding and leavening duties of eggs in a recipe. The most common and easy-to-find brand is Ener-G® Egg Replacer, available in the natural foods or baking section of many groceries, or available online at http://www.ener-g.com/egg-replacer.html. Ener-G® was used to develop the recipes in this cookbook.

      Vegan Chocolate

      When chocolate is needed in this book, you’ll find the recipes call for vegan chocolate chips. Finding vegan chocolate may seem an impossible task as you cruise your grocery aisles and see shelves and bins stocked full of “semi-sweet milk chocolate chips,” but don’t despair. Simply check ingredient lists very carefully, and you may find that even some name-brand chocolate companies have chips lacking dairy, even though they’re not marketed as such.

      Additionally, several vegan-marketed chocolate chips brands are out there, including Tropical Source®, Sunspire® and Enjoy Life®. Notably, Enjoy Life® chips are not only dairy-free, but also soy- and gluten-free.

      For some of the recipes, we’ve used Xocai® “Healthy Chocolate” products. The health benefits of Xocai® are undeniable—it’s full of antioxidants, minerals and flavonols— but please note not all Xocai® products are vegan-friendly. As always, read labels. Xocai® is cold-processed, preserving the natural healthy properties of cacao. When using Xocai® in baking, take care not to warm the product above 100 degrees, in order to preserve all those fantastic health benefits.

      Baking Mixes

      All-purpose baking mixes rock! A single box yields the promise of pancakes, waffles, biscuits, scones, breads and much, much more. Any cook’s dream, right? The problem is that some contain dairy or egg ingredients.

      Wholesome Chow® makes a vegan all-purpose baking mix, as do Arrowhead Mills® and The Pure Pantry®. Unfortunately, Christina-Marie doesn’t see these brands on the shelves of her local grocery, and she can’t always make a trip to her favorite natural-foods store when the baking bug bites.

      Bisquick® Heart Smart is free of dairy and egg products, leaving only the low-listed “sugar” to wonder about. We don’t know the source of the sugar used in the Bisquick® brand, or if it is treated with bone char. We have, however, found about a million or so recipe websites proclaiming “it’s vegan!” So, we’ve chosen to adopt that popular opinion, and used the Bisquick® HeartSmart mix in developing the pertinent recipes in this book.