Vegan Baking, Post Bootcamp

I think I have always been interested in food and baking in particular. In my youth I was Mistress of the Popover--I loved making popovers from a recipe in a kid's cookbook for family lunches. At thirteen I reveled in the classic period of teen alienation and angst while flipping compulsively between videos on 120 Minutes and early Food Network shows on pickle making and cake baking . The past two years though have been the time in which my interest has really taken shape and direction. It's kind of amazing to look back at a very meandering path and realize that it has brought you somewhere you wanted to go.

double chocolate mousse pie from bootcamp

In a literal sense, where I want to go with baking and cooking is still a work in progress, but it's coming and that's so exciting that I just have to smile and cue a triumphant track on my playlist. In the month that I've been back from having gone through Vegan Baking Bootcamp with Fran Costigan at the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York I've been gathering up all my exuberance and pouring it into precision and practice in a more focused way than I ever have before. Not to say that I have never practiced or perfected before, but in really listening to Fran and thinking about how to turn out consistently great things as well as innovating and tinkering, I realized how important it is to have this kind of yogic control over the baking process. It's extraordinary control that is fueled by deep knowledge and garnished with something nebulous, which not to be cheesy, but I think is probably love and respect--for the ingredients, for the process, for the people you make things for, for the beauty of the final product.

chocolate pudding with ginger orange cream

I learned a lot at Bootcamp, things about most effectively using agar (a skill that's eluded me in the past) things about alternative sweeteners and fats, things about taking your time and testing and waiting and redoing and taking things apart and putting them back together. I also learned that I am completely and totally willing to do that. In the same way that I studied Bourdieu in grad school, I am currently reading Bo Friberg's The Professional Pastry Chef (a geniusly well-timed gift--thanks, bunny). And do you know? It's so much the same--I'm reading a book that could never conceive of itself without eggs or milk or gelatin or cream or cheese, things that I have no use for, and thinking: what makes sense about this? Why does this work? What might work differently using my ingredients and preferences? How do I apply this?

blood orange baby bundt cake with spiced chocolate orange glaze

So with the experience of Bootcamp and my newly focused study, I have been working a lot in my kitchen. There are many more pictures from Bootcamp of some things we made (cookies, bars, pies, crisps, crumbles, slumps, puddings, creams, cakes, brownies, bars, truffles, sauces, gels...to name a few) are on my Flickr for your perusal, so for this post I wanted to share some results of the post-Boot experience, like the above baby bundt cake. I hadn't made a bundt cake in probably five years before bootcamp, but making it there reminded me that it can be a great lower fat cake to have with tea. Inspired by Fran's recipe for an orange cranberry bundt cake, I made it once exactly as written, made it again with some different flours and sweeteners, lost the cranberries, tried it with different citrus, liked it with lemon but loved it with blood orange. It was a sweet and bold and a tiny bit tart. I tried some plain, dusted some with powdered sugar, drizzled an orange syrup over it, had a bit of chocolate sauce on it and then lit up at the idea of a Black and Green's Maya Gold bar and tried a chocolate orange glaze with a little bit of spice. It took forever, but then there it was, just exactly the cake that I wanted.


Other projects have been easier. Taking one of my very favorite cookies, a fresh ginger orange cookie, and making it with a different sort of care. Weighing ingredients, weighing the dough, learning exactly how much of each ingredient is really needed and what one small change in the recipe can mean for the cookie. Baking some at one temperature, some at another. Putting a few in plastic bags, some in tupperware, some on a plate--seeing how they change over the days and learning about them over time.


It was a similar story working with these chocolate covered spice cookies, a very soft and cakey cookie similar to a spiced donut, that I developed in November. I made many batches of them through the holidays, but was always tinkering and not keeping the notes I should to know what I liked best about the changes that I was making. They seemed like a prime candidate then for subjection to my improved kitchen discipline. After turning out five batches that came out exactly the same, I was satisfied.


In the past year or so I've been making a concerted effort to use margarine much more sparingly. Ethical considerations are what brought me to veganism. I was not health motivated at all toward a vegan diet so margarine was my go to for baking, but now I'd liked to be using more whole ingredients--canola, olive, and nut oils are my new priorities in baking. Bootcamp inspired me to keep going in this direction so I pulled out a cookie recipe from my earliest vegan days. These particular oatmeal cookies have been a steady number two or three in my cookie arsenal. They're chewy, substantial, toasty and just the perfect sweet... and they call for a lot of margarine, a good cup of it. I was nervous about taking out that much of a core cookie ingredient, but I'd made oatmeal cookies without margarine before and I thought this recipe would also turn out well without it too. I made these once with substituting a cup of walnut oil for the margarine (found that to be too much) and then did them with 3/4 cup and while they were a little less dense and slightly less chewy than usual, they had a great toasty nut flavor from the oil that was a great complement to the currants and brown sugar in the cookie.


Bootcamp also reminded me that biscotti exist and has had me tinkering with new biscotti ideas. Inspired by something I read about how biscotti, which I generally think of as a tea or coffee soul mate are actually also traditionally dunked in liqueurs, I have been making boozy biscotti. The ones above were a deeply fruity chocolate-flecked biscotti made with dried blueberries soaked in port and acai. I've also experimented with an amaretto and almond biscotti, a marsala soaked cherry and rosemary biscotti, a Grand Marnier biscotti with meyer lemon and thyme, and a creme de cassis and zante currant biscotti. Fran revealed that she often works in small batches for testing and it was like a revelation. Sometimes I don't try things that I'm not fairly sure will work because I don't want to waste or to be overburdened with sweets (if, truly, there is such a thing), but working in quarter batches allows me to just try something out and not be afraid of outlandish experimentation.


Most vegans will have encountered agar-agar at some point in their cookbook explorations, agar is a sea vegetable that has many of the same properties as gelatin, but unlike gelatin, it does not come in nice neat little sheets. It comes in powdered, flaked and bar forms. I'd always used powder because that's what I'd always seen in the Asian supermarkets where I shop and where such things are noticeably less expensive than they are at natural foods stores. Somehow I was completely not clued into the differences between the forms of agar. I liked the powder for its almost instant results and used it to set up lots of nut cheeses and always wanted it to work in desserts. I'd learned experientially though that it has a taste that can be unpleasant and that it can set up as hard as a rock. A tattered string of semi- to totally failed desserts through the years though had me writing off agar, but Fran explained how different the forms really are and suggested using the powdered form only for correcting mistakes and helping something set up faster or firmer. For all other uses, the flaked or bar form is what really should be used. It takes more time to dissolve in a heated liquid and it is important to let it completely dissolve to avoid little clumps throughout, but the results are outstanding. It yields a silky smooth and just firm enough texture that is perfect for desserts like the toasted hazelnut and chocolate tart with a brown rice caramel filling that I firmed up into something that could be cut and would just hold together but still be smooth and soft in texture.


I also went back to a recipe I'd screwed up once terribly by using powder agar instead of flaked: Peter Berley's lemon tart in the Modern Vegetarian Kitchen. We made Fran's delicious lemon tart in Bootcamp but I wondered how Berley's tart would come out if I actually made it properly. The verdict? It's pretty great. Fran's tart is a clear and crystal lemon flavor, silky and smooth. Berley's is richer and makes lemons seem decadent in a coconut milk base. They're definitely meant to scratch different lemon dessert itches, but I plan to make them both again and start tinkering a little to find my own specific tart in the very able inspiration offered by both recipes.


A note on the fruit used in the lemon tart--it's horribly out of season, I know. It makes me cringe a little just to see it here. I make every effort to use in season produce and I think it's a commitment that pays off for me in terms of the flavor and texture, but every once in a while, say 'round about February/March when it's grey and cold, I get weak...and truthfully, very tired of apples that have been in storage since November. Also, the berries were on sale and that was the straw that broke my fragile resolve.


Bootcamp also re-ignited my passion for chocolate transfers, which we got to play with a little in class. I found a brown transfer sheet around the corner from the Natural Gourmet at NY Cake Supply and knew immediately that it would look amazing with some melted vegan white chocolate on something like these chocolate amaretto cream cheese cupcakes.


Or these Mexican vanilla cupcakes. I used tiny cutter designed for fondant to cut out the just solidified white chocolate for decoration.


Bootcamp introduced me to the concept of mis en place, a term which the first chapter of The Professional Pastry Chef is also devoted to. It means something like "to put in place" and gets at the ideas of both having ingredients at the ready and components of recipes already prepped. It's not only efficient, it's also extremely practical. I certainly don't want to spend an hour or so making caramel before I can start making the spiced caramel cranberry blondies that will take me fifteen minutes to put together and for which I just need a quarter cup of caramel. But, if I spend an hour making a huge batch of caramel on some rainy Sunday morning when I wake up too early and need a calm project to start my day, and then just have it on hand when I want to make something calling for caramel, it's perfect. I've been thinking a lot about how to plan for time consuming components of recipes and prepare them in larger quantities for future use.


A large jar of caramel is now a standard part of my fridge, a standing policy which allowed me to very quickly but together these Mexican chocolate cupcakes with caramel buttercream for my parents on their recent visit.


...And then to make them again a few days later...mostly just because I could. Since there is a big jar of caramel in the refrigerator and all.


Pre-chopped chocolate is now also part of my mis en place. Which makes quick ganache toppings and melted chocolate decorations a breeze to put together. When there's less fussing that needs to be done to get something ready while you're actually baking, the opportunities to experiment grow. For these hazelnut cupcakes, I was able to top the ones above with just a smooth and rich chocolate ganache and chocolate drizzle, while I whipped the other half of the batch of ganache with a bit of expresso to create an airier topping with a nicely bitter coffee edge.


And speaking of coffee...check out the new home for my coffee/tea cups, and wine glasses, and wine bottles and cookbooks:


I mentioned needing to whip up some cupcakes for my parents recent visit, well, this stand is reason they came up to Boston (now you can see that, though they might have looked good, the cupcakes are pretty paltry payment). My dad designed and built this stand for my birthday this year to take the place of a very over-taxed wire baker's rack. The picture barely does it justice, you'll all just have to come over for tea and marvel at it. My favorite feature is the drawer above the bookshelves which is actually a pull out surface, perfect for mixing or pouring drinks. He also built me an expanded spice shelf, which you can see on the right. All in all a very kitchen elevating birthday.


I was also gifted this incredible tea tray by my vegan baking hermana, who knows that tea trays are an essential part of the pastry experience. I loaded it up with treats to set out for some friends who stopped by to celebrate the coming of year 28 with me: earl grey creme truffles (with Teany tea) and some Frangelico truffles on top, floral molded truffles, white chocolate olive oil orange truffles, and chocolate covered spice cookies on the second level, and assorted cupcakes on the base.


I also made this completely crazed cake to share on my birthday, which started as the sophisticated idea of a meyer lemon and raspberry torte with fresh lavender buttercream and raspberry trim. But after making all of the components, I wasn't feeling the restrained and pretty presentation. So instead I went crazy and just loaded it up like a circus hat. Perhaps all the focus and control of my recent baking projects left me needing to get a little wild--what else could explain the four different kinds of sprinkles, the plastic guinea pigs (to represent my piggy girls, Sherman and Someday), the kitty cat (an albeit markedly thinner version of my Oslo), the pirate and cupcake candle as well as the inscription, "zomg, b-day"--what else besides just plain old fashion good taste I mean?


Interestingly, I think the cake ended up being a lesson in presentation. No one could guess what the flavors of the cake were when it was presented like this. It remained a mystery shrouded in sprinkles.


However, served like this, the meyer lemon cake and the fresh raspberry flavors were immediately apparent to tasters and the lavender (used here as a syrup brushed onto the cake itself instead of in the frosting as in the birthday cake) came through clearly. It's about expectation, I think. People taste, in some part, what they expect to taste. Which is why vegan baked goods always need to look so good to help convince people before they've even had a bite that vegan is delicious. So, happy and beautiful baking, everyone!