Monday, July 27, 2015

Vegan yeast doughnuts!

It looks like I've made these at least three times previously and they improve ever-so-slightly every time. For this batch, I allowed them to proof for the full time suggested in the recipe and made sure they were lightly floured on the tops and bottoms for the final proof. This made them unexpectedly easy to pull off the Silpat I was proofing them on and made it so they didn't stick to the plastic wrap I left on top of the batch so they wouldn't dry out. The resultant doughnuts rose incredibly well, didn't lose a lot of structural cohesion before they made it into the oil, and were delightfully crispy on the outside. Also, I determined that giving them a fairly thorough heating in the toaster oven on Day 2 perked them back up from the soggy condition they would've otherwise been in.

I lightly tweaked my ice cream base recipe as the topping (there was more avocado in this batch than usual) and was really pleased with the result!

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Sadly...

...this looks much better than it tastes.

I've heard great things about Bunner's, a Kensington Market-based vegan, gluten-free bakery (helpful for the ever-growing roster of g/f friends I have -- you know, with a genuine gluten sensitivity, rather than a willingness to follow fads) and have wanted to make the trip to sample their goods for months. I have yet to go, but a trip to Indigo on the weekend provided me with a copy of their cookbook! Eager to get testing, I purchased the ingredients which I didn't already have in my heavily-vegan pantry and got working on their strawberry cake. As a caveat, I completely omitted the arrowroot flour called for in the recipe, so my results are undoubtedly atypical. Nonetheless, this cake is much denser than I would have liked; it's much more like a banana bread than a "white" cake. I know that density is the bane of gluten-free baked goods, but was hopeful that the xanthan gum called for in the recipe would offset that considerably. I didn't.

So I think I'm going to forgo further experiments in gluten-free cakes for now, but given my recent success with developing my own gluten-free brownies, I think I'll attempt to make some of the cookies in the book next. After all, a dense cookie isn't nearly as egregious as a non-fluffy cake.

P.S. I vastly prefer the vegan buttercream in this book over the equivalent recipe in the other vegan baked goods recipe book I own. As long as I remember to add a generous pinch of salt in each case, that is.