There is a fabulous range of vegan baking books out there and plenty of blogs bursting with free recipes (I’d wholeheartedly recommend giving The Post Punk Kitchen a look!), but if, like me, when you chose to to vegan you had a fair few non-vegan baking books don’t feel like you need to throw them away or let them gather dust on your shelf! As I’m hoping to prove here, there are so many simple replacements available when baking that making your favourite cupcake or cookie recipe vegan will become second-hand nature very quickly.
Milk – Milk is very simple to replace, simply swap milk in a recipe for soya, rice, almond etc milk using the same quantity and you’ll barely notice a difference. I use soya, simply because thats what I have in my fridge for tea etc, and I know it doesn’t have much taste at all, and it certainly doesn’t taste like milk which I like. But if this is a problem for you it’s just a case of trial and error with all varieties.
Butter – Butter again is easy. Simply replace butter in a recipe with soya butter (I use Pure Dairy Free which is in most supermarkets) and Bob’s your Uncle! Again its not particularly flavoursome but it does the job well and you’re unlikely to notice.
Eggs – Eggs are perhaps the most tricky thing to change in a recipe as they play an important role in the chemistry of the mixture so unless you buy an egg substitute, what you use to replace the egg(s) depends on what you’re making. I found this brilliant cheat sheet but I also find a quick search online before I bake also helps.
Chocolate – Although there are some vegan chocolate brands and such out there (quick note HOTEL CHOCOLAT does vegan chocolate!), there are a fair few good quality chocolate brands that are vegan anyway, because technically chocolate is just cocoa, cocoa beans, sugar and lecithin, it’s only that brands often add milk and milk powders. So it isn’t hard to find chocolate in your local supermarket thats vegan, especially dark chocolate.
Cream cheese – Tofutti do a huge vegan cream cheese range, with flavours ranging from French onion to Herbs and chives and the plain one is perfect for cream cheese frosting. I will admit the taste really isn’t the same, but I don’t mind that much and it still makes a lovely frosting especially because the texture is perfect! I haven’t (yet) used it for cheesecake, but thats something I’m looking forward to experimenting with during the Big Vegan Bake.
Cheese – There are many many ranges of vegan cheese substitutes, which I’m looking forward to testing out in the savoury recipes in the book as I’ve only tried the Redwood Cheezly Mozzarella and Sheese Cheddar brands.
The Big Vegan Bake 