Transcripts
1. Introduction to the Course: [MUSIC] Making vegan and glutton-free desserts at home is a truly amazing experience. It helps us to heal our body and maintain
a healthy lifestyle. Hi, my name is
Shubranshu Bhandoh and I'm a professionally
trained baker and chef from Le Cordon Bleu. I had the opportunity
to learn and develop different vegan
recipes throughout the years working in
different pastry kitchens. In this class, I want to share
that knowledge with you. The first section of
the class you will try to understand the
basics of vegan baking, as well as try to understand the ingredients we'll be using, such as egg substitutes
like flax eggs, aquafaba, and gluten-free
flours, whole of fats, and types of sweeteners we
can use for healthy baking. The next section we will apply these concepts and learn
to make our first recipe, a chocolate sweet
potato brownie. This recipe is completely refined sugar-free
and gluten free, as we will be using a
date puree to sweeten the butter and also oat flour to give structure
to the brownie. This brownie actually
tastes much better than a regular brownie without
the sugar and fats. Our second recipe is an
oatmeal and banana muffin. You will learn how to
make a flax egg and also learn how to use different gluten-free
flours in a recipe. This muffin is extremely healthy and incorporates a lot of oats, nuts, and seeds and makes for the perfect
breakfast treat. Our next recipe is a
chocolate chip cookie. In this recipe, you
will learn how to make an aquafaba meringue to substitute eggs and give
structure to the cookie. This cookie is also loaded
with pumpkin seeds, oats, and dark chocolate. Our final recipe is a showstopper salted
caramel and chocolate tart. This no-back tart consists of
a raw tart base of peanuts, cocoa powder, dates filled with a salted caramel sauce and
a silky chocolate ganache. I'll also show you some
simple plating techniques so you can impress your
friends and family. This class also comes with
detailed recipe notes, so you can master the
recipes easily at home.
2. Class Outline and Project: Welcome to this class, and thank you for enrolling. In this lesson, I'm going to briefly describe the class project as well as the outline for the class. The class is basically divided into two sections. The first section, we cover the theoretical aspects of being in baking, as well as discuss about the ingredients we'll be using. It's really important to know this so that when you have this knowledge, you'll be able to understand the recipes better, which is the second section of the class. The second section, we will be covering four recipes and all the recipes will cover different techniques and ingredients. After finishing this class, what I would like you to do is take all this knowledge and try to make new recipes and develop your own unique recipes. The project for this class is for you to share any one recipe, to share a picture with me so that I can critique it and give you some reviews and also points where you can improve. Let's begin with the first section of the class.
3. Role of Eggs and Egg Substitutes in Vegan Baking: In this lesson, we'll be learning about the role of eggs in baking as well as the substitutes of egg in vegan baking. So why is egg so important in baking? It's actually a really magical ingredient because it has so many amazing properties which we use. Say, for example, when we use for aerating, like when we make a them a meringue or whipping eggs just to make a lighter batter. It's also used to emulsify when we make a custard or when we make mayonnaise. It's such an amazing ingredient. It also used tenderize for example, when we mix together a cake batter, basically, the fats and the proteins, they actually tenderize the batter and it comes out really soft and moist. It is an amazing ingredient. Now in vegan baking, we actually don't use a single ingredient to replace an egg because there is nothing which can replace an egg fully so we use different ingredients. Say, for example, if you want to take the binding qualities of an egg, we can use a flax egg. But we won't get the leavening qualities of an egg. We'll use some baking powder or baking soda, so then we combine both of them to get the same effect of using an egg. Let's discuss about some of the egg substitutes. The most commonly used one is a flax egg. Flax egg is super easy to make. You just basically take one tablespoon of ground flax seeds and you add three tablespoons of water and just set it aside for 10 minutes. This is basically a substitute for one egg. Now flax egg is super helpful to bind a cake batter or pancakes or cookies, but if you're making a soufflé or light sponge, flax egg is not as useful. Just be mindful of that. The next one is fruit puree or applesauce. How we make this fruit puree is we just basically cook the fruits, like for example, sweet potato. Or we just cook apples, and basically, we just puree them together. You can use about 60 grams of fruit puree for every one egg. Fruit puree is super helpful because it gives really moist texture to a baked product. It also gives a really nice binding quality. When you use fruit puree, just make sure that you also use a leavening agent with the recipe to get a really nice and light product. The next one is bananas. Bananas is one of my favorite egg substitute. But with bananas just make sure that, because it gives a little bit of flavor, so make sure that it basically complements whatever you're making. For example, if you're making a pound cake, maybe use applesauce instead of bananas because then you get a more milder flavor because bananas do have a strong flavor. But if you're making a banana cake or maybe you're making brownies, it's fine to use bananas. For every one banana, you can use one egg. It's like a one is to one substitution. The next egg substitute as aquafaba. Aquafaba is basically just the cooking liquid from chickpeas or any beans. This is also like one of the most magical ingredients in vegan baking. When you actually whip it up, it becomes exactly like an egg white. For example, if you want to use the leavening qualities of an egg white, if you want to make a sponge really light, or if you want to make meringue, you can use aquafaba. For every one egg white, you use about two tablespoons of aquafaba. We'll be using this in our cookie recipe. I'll show you how to make a meringue in the future class we have. I hope this helps you understand the role of eggs, as well as some of the egg substitutes we'll be using in the recipes we'll be studying later.
4. Understanding More About Gluten Free Flours: In this lesson, we'll be learning a little bit more about gluten and the importance of gluten in baking, and how we can actually substitute it in our recipes. Gluten is basically a protein which is found in flour. What it does is basically it binds everything well, and it also helps the baked goods to expand and be really fluffy. When you think of gluten you think of breads and pizzas. But in our recipes we're not going to be using any gluten. Then how do we achieve that texture? There are a few ways you can achieve that texture, either by using chemical leaveners or by using techniques like maybe incorporating aquafaba and a meringue just getting that leavening in our baked goods. Let's understand some of the most commonly used gluten-free flours. The first one is almond flour. If you're going to be making cakes or cookies, almond flour is one of the best ones to use. Because it gives a really nice and tender texture and it gives really fluffy texture to the cakes as well as cookies, so super useful and really healthy as well. The almond flour you get in supermarkets is actually made by blanching the almonds and drying them and just blitzing them together to make a fine powder. If you can't actually find this in the supermarket, what you can do is you can just blitz almonds and use that as well. The second one is oat flour. Oat flour is what we're going to be using in our brownie recipe, as well as the cookie recipe we'll be making. Oat flour is really versatile. It's super high-end protein, really high in fiber. It's really good for you. Also it binds everything really well together, gives a really light texture as well. This is also one of my favorites to use, and I use this really often. The next one is coconut flour. Coconut flour you get it in two ways in the market. One is desiccated coconut, which is like coconut flakes, they're bigger pieces. The second one is a finely ground coconut flour. The coconut flour is made by drying coconut and just blitzing it together. The advantage of using it is that it gives you a really good flavor as well it binds everything together because it can soak all the liquids up in the butter. The coconut flakes or desiccated coconut is also really nice as a texture agent, in cookies or cakes. It gives really nice texture. These are the flours which I really like using. The next flour is rice flour. Rice flour is actually most commonly found in any gluten-free flour blend, which you get in the supermarket. Because it's extremely versatile. It's high in protein and fiber. It gives you only consistent results when you use in breads, even in cakes. Super useful as well. It's just made by blitzing rice and making a powder of rice. That's just rice flour. The last one is corn starch or corn flour. This one, I don't particularly use as much as in baking, as much as I use in making custards or ice creams. It's a really good thickening agent. If you want to basically set a liquid, makeup pudding, it's super useful to use in that. I hope this basically helps you understand about different gluten-free flours we use in vegan baking.
5. Role and Types of Sweetners in Healthy Baking: In this lesson, we'll try to understand the role of sugars in baking as well as the different type of sweeteners we can use in vegan baking to make really healthy baked goods. What does sugar do actually? Sugar is basically hygroscopic in nature. What it does is that it absorbs a lot of moisture in the baked product, so it keeps it really moist and really tender as well. Sugar can also be used when we cream it with the fat, so it basically aerates the butter. It also provides a lot of flavor and also gives a really nice and crispy texture to the baked product. The first one is processed sugars. These can be white sugar, brown sugar, coconut sugar, anyone you like. White sugar will give you the most stable results, but also has the least nutrition. My favorite one is coconut sugar and brown sugar because they give a lot more fudginess and also they are not as processed as white sugar. The next one is dates. Dates is by far my favorite sweetener. I use it so often in baking and it's super healthy. When you use dates in baking, make sure to soak them in hot water and make a puree out of them, then you get a more evenly sweetened butter. Also, it gives a nice texture as well. We'll be using dates in our brownie recipe. It suits the brownie so well because it gives a lot of fudginess to the brownie. The next sweetener is maple syrup. Maple syrup is the most commonly used sweetener in vegan baking. The only thing I don't like about maple syrup is that it doesn't actually give that crispy texture, but it also gives a lot of nice flavor to the baked product and also their fudginess as well. The next one is fruit puree. Now, fruit puree might sound a little bit odd, but it's a really good sweetener. In case, we can use bananas or we can also use sweet potatoes. Now, this is a really healthy way of eating sugar because it's a naturally sweetened. When you use fruit purees, make sure to reduce the liquid in the recipe, because since they are already liquid in form, you don't want to get too much liquid in the recipe. The last one is stevia. Stevia is derived from a plant and it's actually recommended if you have diabetes. It's really healthy. But what stevia won't do is it won't give you a fudgy texture, it won't give you crispiness. It's just for flavoring. If you're using that, make sure to actually use other ingredients basically to get that texture in your baked good. I hope this lesson helps you understand a little bit about sweetness and the role of sugar. When you're substituting sugar for any other sugar alternative, just make sure to adjust the recipe accordingly according to the ingredient you're using.
6. Role of Fats in Baking: In this lesson, we'll be learning a little bit about fats and their role in baking, and also what fats we use in vegan baking as well. What is the role of fats? What does it do? Why do we use it in baking? It basically tenderizes a baked product. For example, you don't use any fat in a cake recipe, you'll find that the cake is really dense and it's not soft at all. What fat does is it basically coats all the flour and other ingredients. Also, fats can be used for leavening. Say when we, basically pep up a fat with oil, it basically incorporates air and it causes the dough to rise. As well as when we use it in pastries, we have different layers of fat and dough, and that also expands when we bake it. Fats, the most important role is it gives amazing flavor that you cannot actually substitute a fat with other ingredients when it comes to flavor. In vegan baking, you can't use butter, which is the most widely used fat in baking. Instead, we use oils like vegetable oil or avocado oil. The only difference is that oil basically won't give you a similar flavor profile to butter,but oil also gives a lot of moisture to a baked product. So it is a really good substitute. The next one is peanut butters and other nut butters like almond butter or hazelnut butter. All these nut butters are actually made by just blitzing the nuts and then they become liquid, and they become butter. You can actually make it at home if you like. What nut butters does is that it gives a lot of fudginess to our brownies, or cakes, or cookies, and it also gives a lot of flavors. They're super high-end protein as well, so they are really healthy. The next fat is fruits, like avocados or bananas. They also are a very good fat substitute when it comes to basically binding baked products. I hope this really helps you understand different types of fats and their uses.
7. Chocolate Brownie: Understanding Ingredients: In this lesson, we're going to be learning our first recipe, which is a sweet potato brownie. This is completely without any sugar or any gluten in the recipe, so it's really healthy. The fruit we're going to be using in this recipe are sweet potatoes. I experimented with bananas and avocados, but sweet potato is the best result because it doesn't give too much flavor, and it also gives a really nice sweetness to the brownie. In place of sugar, we're going to be using date puree. Dates, they gave such an amazing flavor and in brownies, they give really amazing fudginess as well. In place of flour, we're going to be using oat flour. Oats is super healthy. It's really high in fiber as well. Let's begin with our recipe. The first step when you make the brownie is to line our cake tin. I'm going to use a bread tin here. This is about 23 centimeters in length. What I like doing is just putting a little bit of oil on the sides with a brush. It just makes it easy for the baking sheet to come out when it's baked. If you have spray oil, you can also use that. When you use a baking sheet, make sure that it's slightly bigger than the tin so you can easily pull it out. Just put it in the center, and just push it down like that. Press it really evenly on the sides. This is good. You can easily take the brownie out when it's baked. I'm going to set this aside and let's move on to learn how to make the brownie batter. Let's learn how to make the brownie batter. Before we begin with the recipe and I show you the process, I want to briefly discuss the ingredients, and also their health benefits, and also why I use them in the recipe. The first one is sweet potato. When I was experimenting with this recipe, I wanted something to give that binding effect because I'm not using eggs and butter. Sweet potato actually is so high in fiber and minerals that it just gels everything together. Also, it gives a really moist and tender brownie. This is the star of this recipe and it's super healthy as well. I really like using this in this recipe. The second one is dates. I don't want to use sugar in this recipe because I want to make this really healthy. Sugar, when you eat it, it just increases your sugar levels so much and it makes you feel sick. But when you use dates, dates is actually also really high in fiber and antioxidants. It has a low glycemic index, so when you eat it that, your sugar level doesn't spike as much. But it also gives a really intense and dark flavor, so it complements the chocolate really well in the brownie. The next ingredients, I've actually put them in a bowl because I'm going to melt them [inaudible]. It's chocolate, peanut butter, and some olive oil. This forms the fat of the recipe and they are all really healthy fats. The chocolate actually gives really amazing flavor and the peanut butter as well, it just also binds everything together. Oil is just to give a little bit more moist texture. This is basically the wet ingredients in the recipe. For the dry ingredients in this recipe, you're going to be using oat flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder, and a little bit of salt. I'm not going to use any gluten in this recipe because I want it to be really easy to digest and also be really healthy. Oat flour is so high in fiber and super healthy. Cocoa powder as well, it has a lot of antioxidants so this is really healthy as well. The baking powder, I'm just going to use a little bit, just to give a little bit lighter texture because we're not going to use eggs in the recipe. We don't have any leavening agent. The baking powder will compensate for that and give us a lighter texture. An optional ingredient in this recipe is some soy milk. I usually put this if I feel the batter is too dry. I just put it at the end, just a little bit, just to mix everything together and make it more smoother. Let's begin with learning how to make this recipe.
8. Chocolate Brownie: Making the Batter and Baking the Brownie: The first step in the recipe is to soak our dates. This takes usually about 10-15 minutes, that's why we do it before we start assembling the other ingredient. This is optional, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a little bit of a special powder in it, just to give it a really nice flavor. If you don't like coffee, you can totally skip this. But I just feel like coffee actually enhances the flavor of the chocolate. Just put a tablespoon of coffee powder. I'm going to put about 60 grams of water. Just put the scale to zero and make sure the water is boiling hot, because you want it to soak very well and become really moist. Perfect. That's about 60. Just mix it together just to dissolve the coffee and just set this aside for about 10-15 minutes and then we'll blend it after the dates are nicely hydrated. The next step is to cook our sweet potatoes. I'm just going to peel them and then just cut it roughly. I really like the color of this sweet potatoes, look so nice. You're going to cook them until they're really, really tender, because we want them to combine really well in the batter. You just cut the ends off and just cut it in one inch cubes. Something like that. After you've cut them, so it's like quite evenly, I'm going to put a pot of boiling water and then I'm going to boil them for roughly about 10-15 minutes until they're really tender. You can see our water has come up to a boil now. I'm going to put these sweet potatoes in. Just on top of this, I'm going to put the bowl with the peanut butter, chocolate, and oil to melt it. Just keeps stirring the chocolate so it melts evenly and this shouldn't take too long. So after two minutes, you can see that the chocolate is completely melted and the peanut butter is well combined. I'm just going to take this out so that it can cook well. After 10 minutes of cooking, let's check if it's done. Just take the sweet potato and if you put a knife through it, and if it's super soft, very easy to cut, that means it's done. Let's sieve this and let's mash it. Make sure to mash it when still hot, because it'll be very easy to do that. I'm going to just put this straight away and add chocolate mixture so that it combines better. Perfect. Let's put this straight in and just mix it through. When you see that this sweet potatoes is very nicely combined, that's [inaudible] stuff. This looks good. I'm going to just set this aside and start blending my dates. Lets put all the dates in a blender, and put all other liquid as well, because that's important to get a really smooth paste. So you should be able to get a paste which is really smooth like that. That's very nice. I'm going to add this to my chocolate mixture now. After you've put all the paste in, I'm just going to combine together and mix it well. After it's combine really well, that's really good. Let's add the dry ingredients and then lets bake the batter. When we add the dry ingredients, make sure you mix it together really well. You can also use a sieve here to sieve it, but I'm not going to do that because oats doesn't have gluten in it, so it's completely fine if you don't sieve it but it should mixed really well. Perfect. Just add it straight in and just fold it together. Because the flour doesn't have gluten, you can mix it as much as you want because there will be no gluten formation. Keep mixing it, and you'll get like this paste consistency, which is good. I'm going to add the milk in it right now, just so that everything gets really well combined. This will basically make it more smoother and also just combine everything really well. If you want, you can also use a whisk, but I'm just going to use a spatula. You can see it's becoming more smoother now. That's great. That's really good consistency. I'm just going to put this in my baking tin and bake it. Just put the batter straight in, just like that. After we put the whole thing inside, we're just going to even it out from the top. Perfect. Just take a spoon and just even it out. That's great. Just to finish it, I'm going to put a little bit of chocolate on top and some pecans. Just sprinkle them really randomly. Just looks quite nice, when it bakes, tastes quite nice as well. What I like doing is just slightly pressing it down, so when you bake it it doesn't burn. When the chocolate bakes, it melts really well, and it is tastes very nice as well. I'm just going to sprinkle some sea salt on top just before I bake it. That's ready to bake. I'm going to bake this for 30 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. This is our final brownie, and looks so nice. The chocolate is nicely melted. What I'm going to do is just set this aside for 10 minutes in the pan and then I'm going to take it out. It's been 10 minutes, and I'm just going to take it out of the pan now. Our brownie has been cooling for two hours now. Let's finally cut it and see the texture of the brownie. You can cut this into eight pieces, you can cut it into three or four pieces, totally up to you what size you like. You see the inside? It looks so nice and dense and super chocolatey as well and so healthy. If I just cut it like this, it's still moist from inside because of the sweet potatoes and the peanut butter as well. Let's taste it. The brownie tastes so nice. Super fudgy and so delicious. I really hope you like this recipe and you make it at home. Those brownies looks so amazing. They're so fudgy and delicious. Once you make this recipe at home, I'm sure you'll make it again. Now, we're going move on to the next recipe, which is a banana and oatmeal muffins.
9. Banana and Oatmeal Muffin: Understanding Ingredients and Making the Flax Egg: Welcome to the second recipe. In this lesson, you're going to be learning how to make banana and oatmeal muffins, this recipe is super healthy, really high in fiber, and really high in nutrition as well. In place of egg, we're going to be making a flax egg, and also bananas, so both of them will act as binding agent and give really good structure to the muffins. We also going to be using different gluten-free flours in this recipe so that you can actually learn how to use these flours and experiment when you make this recipe. Let's move on and learn how to make these amazing muffins. The first step when we make them muffins is to prepare our muffin tin. What I like doing is just putting a little bit of oil on the side, and putting a piece of baking paper inside. Now you can skip the baking paper if you want, because if you oil the sides, the muffin will still come out, but I find that the baking paper looks quite nice, and it looks like it came out of a cafe, so I like doing it. Also do it before you make the batter, because what happens is sometimes when we prepare the batter, it needs to be baked immediately because we're going to put baking powder and baking soda in it, so it needs to go in the oven quite fast. If you do this step, you don't need to worry about anything. Before I actually line the baking tin, what I'm going to do is just oil the sides. Just take some vegetable oil and just brush all the sides of the muffin tin. So this makes sure all that it comes out fairly easily. If you have bake spray oil, you can just spray the oil on it also, that's completely fine. Perfect. Let's just set this aside. The next step is to divide the baking sheet into six parts. Just do it as roughly as possible. It doesn't have to be perfect. The sheet I'm using is about 40 centimeters and 30 centimeters in [inaudible]. I just divide this into half. Perfect. You've got six sheets of baking paper now. I'm going to put that in the muffin tray. Take the baking sheet and just press it in. Just like that, so you get a nicely covered muffin tray. I'm going to do the same for the remaining as well. Our muffin tin is ready. I'm going to set this aside. Let's move on to then how to make our muffin batter. Let's learn how to make the banana muffins. Before we begin, I'm going to briefly introduce the bed ingredients in this recipe. We're going to be making a flax egg, so I've got flax seeds here. This is about one teaspoon, so we're going to use thrice as much water. I'm going to put about three teaspoon water in this now. This has to be the first thing you do, because the flax egg takes about 10 minutes to hydrate, so we want it to be nicely hydrated. You can just mix it throughout. Just set this aside. The next ingredient is bananas. Bananas is actually the base of this recipe. Banana also is actually a really nice egg substitute because it gelatinizes everything, and it gives a lot of structure to the muffin. Also, it gives a lot of sweetness and flavor, so I really like using banana in this recipe because it's super healthy as well. The next one, for the liquids, you're going to be using soy milk and some oil. The reason I'm using soy milk is to provide a little bit of hydration, because when we add the dry ingredients, you need a wet ingredient to soak all the dry ingredients. Oil is just to give a little bit of fat in the recipe, so it comes out quite moist. The next one is sugar. I'm using some brown sugar here. Brown sugar and banana go really well together, so I prefer using brown sugar in this recipe. If you want to substitute the sugar, you can use dates in the recipe. But for the muffins I really like using sugar, because it also caramelizes and gives this really nice crust to the muffin. The first step, what I'm going to do is put the banana in the bowl and just mash it slightly. The banana I'm using is actually not that ripe, but what I would really prefer you to do is just use stale bananas, like bananas which are completely dark, because they're the best to make any banana bread or muffins. Just put this in the bowl. Next step, I'm just going to mash it. Just with a folk, it's always better to mash it nicely, so that it combines quite well with the other ingredients. It also breaks down quite well when it bakes. When it's nicely mashed like this, I'm going to add the sugars in it. Just mix it through, because the sugar will help it to break down slightly. Now the banana looks good. I'm going to add the milk and the oil, and just first get through. Once you see it's combined, that's really good. Now if you want, you can actually even blend it, but I quite like the banana chunks in the muffin because it is quite good. I'm going to set this aside and I'm going to explain you the dry ingredients in the recipe.
10. Banana and Oatmeal Muffin: Making the Batter and Baking the Muffin: These are the dry ingredients we'll be using to make the muffin. The flour we're going to use is rice flour, oat flour, and I'm also going to put a little bit of coconut and almond flour in it. The combination of these flours works really well. Because rice flour it just combines everything together really well, oat flour also gives structure, and the coconut flour and almond flour gives that moist texture. Since we're not using any eggs or any all-purpose flour, it's always good to use flours in combination to get the best properties out of them. Also, I'm going to use some baking powder and baking soda because I don't have eggs in the recipe, so I want a leavening agent just to rise it and just to make it really fluffy. To increase the nutrition of the recipe, I'm also going to add some oats, pecans, and some chocolate. I'm going to fall this at the end when I've finished making the butter, so when we eat it, you'd get like chunks of this not some chocolate, which tastes quite nice as well. I'm also going to put some cinnamon in the recipe, it's just about half a teaspoon, and it goes really well with the banana. This is optional, if you want to skip it, you can, but I would highly recommend to put a little bit of cinnamon in the recipe. Let's move on to assembling the butter. After five minutes of keeping the flax egg, you can see that it's nicely hydrated, it's become this thick paste, and that is exactly what you want. I'm going to add that to the banana butter, and just whisk it together. Perfect. It's completely whisked through. Now let's add the dry ingredients in the butter. Before we add the flours in, let's make sure we mix the baking soda and baking powder together really well, so you don't get any clamps of the leaf nuts. I'm not going to sieve it because I'm going to just mix them together really well because the flours don't have any gluten in it and you can mix it as much as you want, perfect. This one as well. I'm going to add all three of them straight in the pot. Add in the flour, as well as the almond flour, and the coconut as well. Just mix it together really well, so it's completely combined. You get this really thick butter which is really good. Once you see it's almost combined, I'm going to add the oats in it. This makes the recipe super healthy. Just gently mix it through. You see the consistency of the butter, it's like not really smooth but at the same time it's nicely mixed. This is really good consistency. This is exactly how it should be. Let's put this in our muffin tin, and let's bake it. The easiest way to put the butter in the muffin tin is to use a spoon. Just take the butter and just slide it through your finger, just like that. Just fill it to the top, so it rises really well, and looks good. That's the last one. Before putting it in the oven, what I like doing is just cleaning up if you've got any butter on the side so it doesn't burn, basically. That's how it should look like. To finish it, I'm going to put a little bit of brown sugar on top, and some oats as well so when it bakes, it looks quite nice. Just to sprinkle the brown sugar and a few oats. Perfect, that is ready. Please put the muffins on a tray and I'm going to bake this for about 30-40 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. Then I'll show you how you can check if it's ready. These are what our muffins looks like after 30 minutes, and they look nicely baked. To check if they're good, what I like to do is just put a skewer inside in the center. If it comes out clean, that's good, that means it's baked. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to let them sit in the mold for 10 minutes and then I'll take it out and put it on the cooling rack. It's been 10 minutes since the muffins have been cooling down. Just take them out and put it out to cool. See the paper actually makes them look quite nice. I'm going to cool this down for at least an hour, but if you can cool it down for two hours, that would be really good. Because the banana, it takes some time actually to just gel together, because when it's hot, it's still baking. I'll show you after an hour how it looks like from the inside. It's been about one hour, and now they're nicely cooled down. Before I serve them, this is optional, but what I like doing is just putting a little bit of icing sugar on top because it looks quite nice and it looks like it just came out of a bakery. Just take a sieve, put some icing sugar. This is a fine muffin. It looks quite nice with the icing sugar. Let's see the inside now. It's really moist, really soft, and it's got a really nice crumb. Because of the bananas, it just gets so moist and nice. Let's taste it. That tastes so nice because of the bananas and the chocolates and the oats, it just gives such an amazing flavor. Because we put nuts in it, it just compliments the flavor of the bananas as well. I really hope you like this recipe. Those muffins looks so delicious. I really hope you make this recipe and it's super healthy and super light to eat. Also because we incorporate nuts and oats in it, it becomes really high in fiber. Let's move on to our next recipe, which is chocolate chip cookies.
11. Cookies: Understanding Ingredients : In this lesson, we're going to be learning our third recipe which is chocolate chip cookies. These are really different from the conventional cookies we eat and they have a lot of seeds and nuts and oats. Also, the base of the recipe is made with chickpea water. It's aquafaba. It's so surprising when I was actually developing this recipe, that making a meringue out of chickpea water gives really amazing texture and also acts as a really good eggs substitute. I'm really excited to begin teaching you this recipe. Let's begin. Let's learn how to make a chocolate chip cookie. Before we begin with the recipe, let's briefly understand the ingredients I'm using and also why I'm using them. These are mainly the dry ingredients we'd be putting in the recipe. The first one is almond flour. What almond flour will do is make our cookies really tender and really moist because we don't have eggs, that's why almond flour is really important in this recipe. Also, the cookies don't get dry, if you use almond flour, so it keeps them moist over a few days as well. That's an advantage of using it. The second one is oat flour. Oat flour is super healthy and it also binds everything together. It gives really good structure the cookie as well. I'm also going to put about half a teaspoon of baking powder in it, just so that it gets a lighter texture when it bakes and it's not dense. The next one is sugar. I'm using really less sugar here, I'm not going to put too much sugar in the recipe. This is brown sugar. This is mainly to give that nice crust when you eat a cookie. That nice crispiness as well, and also it will give us a tender texture when it bakes. The next one is desiccated coconut. Coconut what it does is that it just absorbs all the liquids when we put in the recipe and also tenderizes the butter. This is also really nice and also gives really nice flavor as well. The add-ins in the recipe. Now when I was designing this recipe, I wanted it to be super healthy. I was experimenting with different nuts and seeds. This is the ratio I'm using in this recipe. I've got pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, oats, and a little bit of chocolate. This will make the cookies really healthy because all the ingredients have really have high fiber content, and chocolate has anti-oxidants. All of this is super healthy for you, and if you make it for your kids, they won't even realize they're eating it, but it's still there in the cookie recipe. That's also an advantage. Let's move on to the wet ingredients. The wet ingredients in this recipe is aquafaba and the fats are peanut butter and some oil. This is going to be the base of our recipe. We're going to whip it up and do a meringue. This will basically give us that structure we need in a cookie and also give it a slight amount of crispiness as well. This is actually like the star of this recipe. Imagine chickpea water is being used to make chocolate chip cookies. That is really amazing. Peanut butter is mainly to give the flavor to the cookies and also a really nice texture as well. I'm using a little bit of oil just to give a little bit of hydration and just to gel the cookie dough together. Let's begin with the process of making the cookie dough. Making this cookie dough is super easy. What we need to do is first, we need to melt our fats because it'll be hard to combine the peanut butter when it's like this. I'm going to melt this in a microwave just for 30 seconds, so it just becomes liquid and I'm going to set this aside. Second, what I'm going to do is, I'm going put the dry ingredients in a bowl except for this one. The add-ins we always add later. Third, what I'm going to do after I add the ingredients here is, I'm going to whip my meringue. After you melt your peanut butter and oil, this is how it should look like. It should be super liquidity because it'll combine really bad with the cookie dough. I'm going to set this aside and move on to mixing my dry ingredients. Put the almond flour, the oat flour and the baking powder, the desiccated coconut, and the sugar, and we're just going to mix it together. After the dry ingredients are combined, I'm just going to set this aside and show you how to make the aquafaba meringue.
12. Cookies: Vegan Meringue, Cookie Dough and Baking the Cookies: To make the chickpea meringue, I would suggest that you use a mixer because it takes about five to 10 minutes to mix it to a meringue. We don't want to make a stiff meringue. It should just be a really soft meringue. After one minute of mixing, you can see that it's already started to form some bubbles on the top, so that's really good. Now, the difference between a French meringue is that we actually add sugar to the egg whites. But in this case, you don't need to add sugar to the chickpea water, you just keep whisking it. After about two minutes of whisking, you can see that it start to get more structure. It's actually started to look a little bit like a meringue. It's still a little bit far away, so I'm going to keep whisking it. After four minutes of whisking, you can see that it started to get more structure. It's got these loose peaks, and you know what, this is perfect. This is completely fine for making cookies. When we make cakes, we take it a little bit more ahead, the more stiffer peaks. But for cookies, this is perfect. I'm going to stop now and I'm going to add the cooled peanut butter and oil liquid into this. Just add the peanut butter in and just mix it through. You don't want to deflate it too much, but at the same time just make sure that it's combined. If you want, you can actually use different butters as well. If you like almond butter you can use that as well. You can even use hazelnut butter. Just the flavor you like, you can use it. This is good, I can see that it's combined. I'm going to add this to my dry ingredients. Just put it straight in the dry mix we made earlier, and just mix it through. You'll see it will just slowly it will form this clump which will be nice for making cookies. See it's dehydrated, and it's come together now. At this point, I'm going to add the mix in, add all the seeds and the chocolate. Now, we're just going to mix it properly until all the dry ingredients are hydrated. Now, you have two options after this is mixed, either you can bake it straight away, that is also completely fine. But I like to cool it down in the fridge at least two hours because I think that just gives better flavor. Like we do it for other cookies as well when we make cookies with egg in it, we cool it down as well, so similar to this, it just gels together better when it cools down. You don't really need to worry about poor mixing because all the flour we're using is gluten-free. If you mix as much as you want, there won't be any gluten formation. To check if the cookie dough is nice, what I like to do is just take a little bit, and if you clump it in your hand, it should just come together like this. If it comes together like this, that's great. I'm going to put this in the fridge for about one hour, and then I'll show you how to bake it. Just wrap it nicely with a plastic wrap, and let's check this dough after one hour. After 45 minutes of cooling the cookie dough, what I'm going to do is set up my tray and put the oven to preheat. Because the oven usually takes about 15-30 minutes to get warm, what I'm going to do is just spray some oil. You can also brush oil if you like. Spread a sheet of baking paper, and you press it down. The tray is ready. Next, the oven, I'm going to preheat at 180 degrees celsius for about 15 minutes. Then I'll show you how to roll the cookie dough. That's what our cookie dough looks like after one hour. It's nicely refrigerated and it's quite cold now. When the cookie dough is cold, it's also easier to shape. To shape the cookie, you can either use an ice cream scoop to take it out or you can also use a spoon. I'm going to use a spoon today. Then I'm just going to roll it in my hand to make it into a smooth ball. Just take a tablespoon, and dig about this much. That's about one portion of cookie dough. Just take it in your hand, press it down, and just roll it like that. You get like this smooth cookie dough ball, and put it on the baking tray. Similarly for the others as well. In this bunch, I'm just going to bake six cookies and the rest I'm going to bake later. You can just store this dough in the fridge for about five days. It stays completely fine. Something like this. We have our six cookies. Before I bake this, what I'm going to do is just sprinkle a little bit of sea salt on top so it just gives a nice flavor. Also, I'll flatten it slightly so you get crispy edges when you bake it. Just press it down slightly, and because it doesn't have gluten, it will tend to crack slightly so don't worry about it. Similarly for this one as well, just gently press it down. If you see it's cracking here just stick it together so you get a more even shape. After you flatten the cookies, what I'm going to do is just put a tiny bit of sea salt on top so it just gives a good flavor when it bakes. Perfect. That's pretty. I'm going to bake this for about 15, 20 minutes, and then I'll show you how to check, and the consistency I like. If you like slightly cakey cookies, you can bake it for about 12-15 minutes. If you like more crispier, you can bake 15-20 minutes. I like it a little bit more crispier, so I'm going to bake it anywhere between 15-20 minutes. These are our final cookies and they look so nice. It's got nice and beautiful golden color, a nice caramelization on the sides. I'm going to cool this down on the tray for about 10 minutes, and then I'll take it on the cooling rack, and then cool it down more. After 10 minutes of cooling down, I'm going to put it on the cooling rack. It's important to put it on the cooling rack so it doesn't get soggy from the bottom. I really like crispy cookies so it just maintains the nice and crispy edges. I'm going to cool this down for another 30 minutes, and then we'll see how the texture is from the inside. After 30 minutes of cooling down, let's see the texture of the cookie. It's nice and chewy from the middle, and really crispy from the edges. That I find as really a good texture. Let's taste this. That taste really nice. It's not too sweet, it's a little bit salty, and it's quite crispy on the edges. Also the chocolate, and the seeds, it makes it taste really nice. It's so high in fiber as well, and not that much sugar. I think this is a really healthy cookie. I hope you enjoyed this recipe. When you make it at home, you won't even realize that the cookies have so many healthy ingredients, and they're made with chickpea water. I hope you learned a lot from that lesson. Now we're going to move on to the next lesson, which is a show stopper dessert of this class, which is a salted caramel and chocolate tart.
13. Chocolate Tart- Making the Tart Dough: Welcome to the last recipe of this lesson. In this lesson, we're going to be learning how to make a no-bake sea salt chocolate caramel tart. It's super delicious and super healthy as well. We're going to make the tart with peanuts and dates, so really high in fiber. Also, we're going to be learning how to make a salted caramel sauce which is completely vegan. You're going to be using a combination of coconut milk and coconut cream in it, and that gives a super silky texture. To finish it, we're going to make a chocolate ganache. We're going to be learning a lot of techniques in this lesson, so I'm sure you're really excited. Let's begin with learning how to make this beautiful tart. The first step when I make the chocolate tart is to grease our tart tin. This is about 20 centimeter in diameter, tart tin. The reason we do this is once the chocolate tart sets, it's just easier to take it out. Because if you don't grease it sometimes it just gets stuck on the corners and you don't want that. You want it really nice and smooth-edged and you want it to come off really cleanly. I have some oil here. Now, you can use any oil you like. It's just a tiny bit all along the side. You don't need to put a lot, just enough that it's nicely greased. That is perfect. Once you've done this step, I'm going to set this aside and I'm going to move on to the next step of making the tart dough. After we've greased the tart tin, the next step is to make our tart dough. This is our raw tart dough, you're not going to be baking it. The main ingredients in this tart dough are peanuts, cocoa powder, and dates, so that is it. It's really healthy. I'm using peanuts here, but you can use any other nuts if you like. You can use almonds, walnuts, anything you like. I like using peanuts because I really like the flavor of peanuts with chocolate. Also, it's super healthy as well, it has such amazing properties. It's got antioxidants, it's got minerals, so I really like using it. Also, I'm going to use cocoa powder just to flavor it because I want to make a chocolate dough, so this is just the flavoring agent. For sweetness, I'm going to add some dates. These are already pitted, but these are dry. If I mix it together, it won't mix properly. What we need to do is we need to soak it in boiling water, which I have here. This usually takes about 5-10 minutes to tenderize and soak and then we'll strain it and we'll put it in the tart dough. The first step when you mix this is just to put the boiling water. It just needs to be covered. It's nicely submerged. That's great. The next step, what I'm going to do is I'm going to place this together just to form a rough, crumbly mixture. After five, 10 minutes, once this is tender, I'm going to place that together with this mixture. I'm going to use a small food processor here, but you can also use any blender you have as well. Just put the cocoa powder as well. I'm also going to put just a pinch of sea salt. We're going to just place it until it's just crumbly. We just want it to grit and become slightly smaller in size. When we get this crumbly texture, that's really good, I'm going to add the dates in it now. Just take a sieve and just sieve the dates. If you try to feel the dates, it should feel really soft because it's nicely hydrated. This goes straight in our chocolate crumbly mixture. Just put the whole thing inside. I'm going to blend this until it becomes gradually sticky and it comes together really well. When you get this texture, it's basically quite sticky and it comes together like that. That is quite nice. I'm just going to put this back in the bowl. I'm going to finish with just a tiny bit of olive oil so that it sticks together better. This is our final mixture, and you see the texture like that. That's good. Once you've put the tart dough inside, just add a tiny bit of olive oil in it, about one teaspoon. That's perfect. Just mix it together. If you want, you can use a spatula, but I'm just going to use my hand because I think I can mix it better with my hand. You just want it to form a really nice dough. Whatever crumble you have, which is not sticky, you just wanted everything to become nice and combined. This is important to do because you don't want the tart dough to break when we take it out and you want it to have very nice structure. I can already see that it's coming together really well now. Perfect. This is perfect. I'm going to put this in my greased tart tin.
14. Chocolate Tart- Lining the Dough: Let's learn how to spread the tart and line the tart. I'm going to take half the dough first and line the base and then I'm going to take the rest and line the sides. Just start from the center and press it down so that it just forms as even as possible. If it's sticking to your hand, you can just slightly wet your hand and then spread it so it makes it more easier. I'm going to add a little bit more to cover the sides where you see gaps. Perfect. I can see that the bottom is covered. Now, to make this even, I'm just going to take a little piece of baking paper and then take a glass and just press it down slightly. Here you go, a sheet of baking paper, just put the sheet of baking paper on the side and then take a glass and just try to keep as even pressure as possible. This step is optional, like you can skip it but I just like doing it because you get a really nice and even bottom there. Just press it down like that. It starts to get more even. After you've made the bottom layer even, what I'm going to do is if I see a lot of dough on the sides, I'm just going to gently start pushing it up. Just pressing it down like that so it just starts to go up. Just like this. This is similar to how you would line a normal tart with tart dough, a similar technique. Now what I'm going to do is take the rest of my dough and start putting it on the sides. Just arrange the dough on the sides and then we'll just press it down. Once you've roughly covered the sides like that, now we're going to make it even. To do that, what you do is you just press and turn so it becomes more and more even. Make sure to stick it on the side. If I can see any thick sides, I'm just going to push it up. This side looks thick. I just push it up and also push it inside the ridges so its fixed up. After you've roughly covered the tart, then I'm going to put this in the freezer for at least an hour and then we can make the tart a little bit more neater. It'll be easier to trim off the excess tart dough. After one hour in the freezer, now our dough feels more solid, so it'll be more easier to trim. What I'll do is I'll just take a paring knife and just drag it along the corners, just like that. You get a more smoother edge and you just press it down and we're definitely going to use this. You can just roll it up into a ball and eat it. Don't throw it away. It becomes like a protein bar. This edge is bad. Just drag it. Just whatever it takes right there. You see how even that is. That looks really good. I'm going to put this in the freezer for about 1-2 hours and move on to the next step of making the caramel which I'm going to put on the bottom.
15. Chocolate Tart- Salted Caramel Sauce: After we finish lining the dark, then we're going to learn how to make a Salted Caramel Sauce. This is our second element of the dot. To make this, I'm going to use white sugar, I'm going to make a drag element with this white sugar, which I'll show you later. I'm going to use half coconut milk, and half coconut cream. The reason I do this is because coconut cream, you have to be really careful with it, because if you boil it, it tends to split. But the coconut milk, it's more stable. Coconut cream is just to give us more creaminess in the salted caramel sauce, and the milk is to form a smooth emulsion. Make sure that both the liquids are at room temperature, because when you make the drag caramel, if you add a cool liquid to the caramel, it tends to splash. It's not safe to make it. Make sure that it's at room temperature. In traditional salt caramel sauces, we have a lot of butter, a lot cream, so it thickens very well, but since we're not using any butter here, it's important to use a starch to take in it. When we uses starch, it's important to mix it in a liquid. I'm going to mix it with the coconut milk, and this will go in the caramel once it's caramelize the sugar. Just add the cornstarch in it. If you add the cornstarch without mixing it, it tends to clump up, and doesn't form a smooth liquor. Just mix it through. Perfect. That's nicely combined. Let's move on to learning how to make the dry caramel. Just put your pot on a gas. I'm going to put the gas on median flame. Just put the sugar on the pot, and we don't put any water in this caramel. This is a dry caramel. With the dry caramel, you can actually stir it without crystallizing the sugar. I'm just going to keep stirring it maybe after every 10, 15 seconds, so that it caramelizes evenly. After about one minute of cooking it, we can start seeing that, started to melt here and it's becoming more liquidity. It's important to keep stirring it so that it caramelizes evenly. You'll slowly see that all this will start melting. As you see it's getting more liquidity now, and it's getting a beautiful color as well. See one, all the sugar will combine. Rarely value we don't want any sugar which is not combined because then it won't emulsify into a smooth caramel sauce. When you see it nicely combined and it's got a beautiful color. I'm going to add the coconut milk at this point, and I'm going to take it off the gas as well. Just be super careful, because it tends to splash. Just add the coconut milk and keep mixing it. I'm going to cook this for about 30 seconds, just so that the constant cooks out properly. As you see that spreads here now. Only really nice and smooth sauce. I'm going to take this off quickly and then I'm going to add the coconut cream. Just add the coconut cream. It will just make it really nice and smooth. That looks really nice. Once it cools down it tends to thicken as well, so you don't want it to be too solid. You want it to be dell the cream. I can't see any bits of sugar. It's nicely combined. To finish the caramel, I'm going to add a pinch of salt. Just use some really good sea salt here and just about tea spoon of vanilla as well. Just mix it through really well, and you see that consistency, that's really good consistency. I'm just going to basically set this aside in a bowl and cool it down for about 10, 15 minutes, then I'll put it in my dot. After the caramel is cooled down for 10 minutes, I'm just going to put it on the bottom of our [inaudible] When I use the caramel, I tend to leave a little bit aside just so that I can use it for finishing the dot. Maybe put about 3/4 of it. Just keep just a little bit, just for the final finishing of the dot. Please move the tray slightly and it's evenly spread now. We want the caramel to set. I'm going to put this in the freezer for about one hour so it sets really nicely, and then I'm going to put a layer of ganache on top of this. Let's put this in the freezer and let's move on to learn how to make the chocolate ganache.
16. Chocolate Tart- Chocolate Ganache and Plating the Tart: After we've finished making the caramel, let's learn the next element, which is our chocolate ganache. This is super easy to make. I've got coconut cream, coconut milk, and a little bit of coffee. I'm just going to get this to boil, put my chocolate in it and just mix it into a smooth emulsion. When you make this, please make sure to chop the chocolate slightly because it melts more easily. Also, I'm going to use the same pan which I used for making the caramel. I haven't actually cleaned it because I find it gives really nice flavor, also it saves time because you don't need to clean it. Let's begin. I'm just going to put the coconut milk and the coconut cream in the pot. Put the coffee. Now, you can use more coffee as well. I'm just going to use about one tablespoon. Let's get this to a boil. I have put the pot on medium flame. Just mix the coffee together, and this should take about 30 seconds to a minute, it'll come to a boil. You see it's almost started to come to a boil now, we can see bubbles on the side. See, that is perfect. Once the center starts to boil, I'm just going to take the pan off the heat. Just put all the chocolate in and just completely submerge it. I'm going to let this sit for about 30 seconds so that the chocolate tempers, and then I'm going to mix it nicely to form a smooth emulsion. After 30 seconds, just take your spatula and just mix it really well. You can also use a vesicle to mix it well. You see it's become really smooth. Just keep mixing it until it combines completely. Perfect. That is really good. I'm going to just set this aside in a bowl and cool it down for about 10 minutes and then we'll put it in our top. Our ganache has been cooling for about 15 minutes now and if you touch it, it shouldn't feel hot, if it's room temperature that's fine, but it shouldn't be hot. If it's slightly hot, just cool it down for slightly longer. Let's put it in our tart dough. Let's go straight in. Just spread it. Perfect. Just shake the pan a little bit so it spreads nicely. You see, it's nicely filled now. What I'm going to do is I'm going to put this in the freezer for about one hour and when the ganache sets, I'm going to cover it with plastic wrap and then put it in the freezer overnight. This is our tart from yesterday and it's nicely frozen, so I put it in the freezer for about 12 hours and let's have a look at it now. That looks nice. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to put it here for five minutes so that it just tempers slightly and I'll take it out of the tin. It's been five minutes and I can see that it's tempered a little bit. When you take it out of the tin, use gentle pressure on the bottom and just press it up slightly and it should come out like that. That is really nice. It's got really nice edges. I didn't get any breaking from the sides or any damage to the tart, which is good. After we've taken the tart out of the tart tin, I'll show you how to push in the the tart. I'm just going to cut a really small piece and I also wanted to say that it's more easier to cut the tart when it's frozen and it gets a little bit harder and tricky to cut it when it's hot slightly. So I would recommend that you cut it when it's still frozen and if you want to serve it to your guests, just put it out in a tray and put it in the fridge and you can serve it directly from the fridge. But if you try to cut it when it's in the fridge, it just gets a little bit hard and you don't get really clean slices. To cut it, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a glass of boiling water, a chef's knife, and a tea towel. Let's see how to cut this tart. Just dip your knife in the boiling water and just keep it there for five seconds. Just wipe it on a cloth. I'm just going cut a really small piece. You start off from the center, just wipe your knife again. Then you just cut a small piece like that. This technique, you'll get a really nice and smooth cut. Just lift it up from the bottom really gently. You see that looks really nice. You can see the layer of the caramel and the chocolate also looks really nice. We've got a really even layer of tart dough. The next step, I'm going to show you how to plate this tart with the salted caramel sauce. Just put the tart in the center. In the first method of the plating, I'm just going to put a little bit of cocoa powder on top of it, so just sprinkle on top of it. This gives a really good flavor as well. This is the first plating, really simple. Lets taste this now. It looks so silky and it's really nice. It's really smooth. You can see all the layers really well. That is so good. Now I'm going to show you the second plating in which I put the same tart with the cocoa powder and I put it on a plate with the caramel sauce. For the second plate method, I'm going to use our caramel sauce. I just heat it up a little bit so that it's this smooth texture. Now, you can do this any way you like. Some people what they do is they take some and then they just splash it on the plate. You can do that as well. I'll just do a random circle, just like that. Then I'll place the tart right here. Perfect. This is another way of doing it. This looks quite nice. You can also put another ice cream if you want. You can get some vegan ice cream and if you want, you can put some caramel on top of the tart as well just like that. That looks really nice. I'm really happy with the texture and also how it looks like. The chocolate tart looks so amazing and I hope you really enjoyed the lesson. This is our last recipe and we finally finished learning all the recipes in this lesson. I hope you could learn a lot and you could learn a lot of different techniques as well and I'm sure you'll make all these recipes at home.
17. Thank you!: We finally come to the end of this lesson. I hope you could learn a lot from this class. I'm sure you could learn different techniques in how to use different ingredients and you'll be able to make really beautiful cakes and brownies and cookies. I would really like for you to share pictures of your work so that I can basically connect with you as well. Please feel free to follow my YouTube channel as well as email me if you have any questions or doubts. Feel free to drop in a review as well of the class. I hope to see you in one of my future classes. Thank you for enrolling again.
Shubranshu Bhandoh, Baker/Pastry Chef - Le Cordon Bleu
