VEGAN BAKING MASTERCLASS

1. Vegan Baking MasterClass: Welcome to the in baking one-on-one. Christina, your instructor, and I personally have worked as a baker before I became vegan. So once I started becoming begin, I was wondering, okay, what are some of the foods that I can still have? What are the deserts that I can still be making? And this whole class really focuses on very easy ingredients, very basic techniques so that you guys can apply it to basic recipes. But it'll serve as a really strong foundation for some of your more complicated ones in the future. So first up, we're going to talk about the ingredients of a vegan pantry in the form of substitutes. And less than one is going to focus on things like your milks, you are creams, your cheeses, your sour creams, and those are very easy substitutes that I'll be recommending. Your second lesson is going to focus on fats like butter. And I'll tell you what works and the shortcomings of each of the ingredients. Third lesson is going to be incredible egg. And there are so many different substitutes for that depending on how you actually use your egg. I've also included a section on specialty ingredients, sort of like your molecular gastronomy, just to cover all of the basis. Now after talking about ingredients and quick substitutes in lesson four, I thought it would be a good idea for me to take you through a couple of recipes and then show you how I would substitute for each of those. And then I'm actually going to give you guys a little homework, a recipe of your own to see what you would do for such substitutions. Finally, I knew that you guys would want an easy, foolproof vegan recipe that you would take anywhere. So for that, I have a super easy and super delicious vegan vanilla cake. And you can use it for cupcakes, for a birthday cakes, and then really just anything that calls for such an occasion. So easy to make and so lovely. So I hope you guys all enjoyed this course. 2. Milks, Creams, & Cheeses : Welcome to Lesson one, everyone. And this time we're going to talk about ingredients, substitutes for things like your milks. You're paying 0 cheeses, your buttermilk. And this is a particular category where it's very easy to substitute for because milk pretty much functions as the liquid to your baking goods. So it doesn't really do too much other than add a little bit of richness. Now, since I'm going to be going through a couple of different substitutes in this section, I'm going to write up some notes for you and that will be right at the end of the video, so you don't have to take notes to fervently. So in terms of milks, there are so many varieties of non-dairy milk in your grocery store. If we're talking like oat milk, we're talking soy milk, almond milk, cashew milk. Sky is really the limit, rice milk as well. So the thing that you want to think about when it comes to just milks is how rich and what is the flavor that you want your baked goods to be. Because in general, I'll say that something like a soy milk is going to have a more creamy mouthfeel. Whereas maybe an oat milk or cashew milk will be somewhat lighter, but it'll also be sweeter in taste. And sometimes when it comes to baking and you're adding in your sugar and your other flavoring ingredients, that sometimes doesn't make a difference. But if you did want something a little bit thicker, I would steer towards the soy milk side. If you wanted something a little bit thinner, I would go towards the nut milk side. Keeping in mind, this is a work in progress. Definitely go to your supermarkets, try out different milks just to find out, okay, what is its texture? Is it thick? Is it thin? How does it taste? Is it more blend? Is it on the sweeter side? And understanding all of that is going to help in you deciding which type of non-dairy milk is good for your particular recipe? Let's talk about cream now. So usually when it comes to cream, the easiest substitute is going to be getting a coconut cream or coconut cream or coconut milk. Coconut milk is gonna be on your thinner side. Coconut cream is going to be very thick because a majority of it is going to be coconut fat. And really depending on your recipe, you'll know which one to use for that. Now, specifically, if you're looking for something like a whipped cream, you absolutely need to be going for the coconut cream version. Because the substitute for whipped cream, traditionally in a vegan sense, is you take the can of coconut cream, which is a majority fat again. And then you stick it into the refrigerator overnight so that all of the fat pretty much solidifies. And then you take it out of the can and you beat it with a mixer until it gets nice and fluffy. It mimics whipped cream actually quite well. It's a little bit on the softer side. So I know some people might add either some cornstarch or some Auger to it just to solidify that cream some more. But which coconut cream is an excellent substitute for whipped cream? Of course, off the market today, there are soy whips. There are different like non-dairy things that you can actually whip up. They will contain extraneous ingredients such as your guar gums or something that thickens up the mixture so that you can, once you beat air into it, those air bubbles will get trapped inside and stay. So a lot of options there. When it comes to something creamy, like cheese. What a lot of vegans will use is actually just pureed nuts. So periodic cashews definitely come to mind when you want to make something like a vegan. Cheesecake. Caches are typically much sweeter and they have a lot of fat in them. So once you blend it, it is very creamy and has the consistency of cheese. Now if you don't want to use nuts, I would say another good option is to just find a block of silken tofu and you blend that and that actually becomes quite creamy, very cheesy, I would say as well. My last few ingredients in this section is going to be your sour cream, and then it's going to be your buttermilk. For the sour cream, that's really easy. Actually, just a plain vegan yogurt is going to substitute very well for sour cream. It has a thickness and a richness and consistency that is very similar to sour cream. Just makes sure that you get the ones that are playing that don't have sugar in it because otherwise that sugar amount will effect your ingredient otherwise. Then finally, with buttermilk, so easy to accomplish, and with buttermilk, I am going to recommend that it be soy milk. So usually it's about one cup of soy milk and then two tablespoons of vinegar. And I usually use apple cider vinegar. You mix those two together and you set it aside for about five to ten minutes. And you will see that basically the acid from the apple cider vinegar just curls up the protein in the soy milk and it just becomes really rich and thick and very buttermilk like so anytime you guys need a buttermilk recipe, that is going to be your go-to. 3. Fats: Welcome to lesson to everyone. And in this lesson, we're going to talk about substitutes for butters, for fats use in baking. And again, just like non-dairy milk and creams. There have been so many more options in grocery stores in the past couple of years. So definitely go around and look for those. I will say that some of the shortcomings of vegan butter is that it is very, very soft. You never really need to keep it at room temperature because otherwise it will melt. So whereas with recipes or cough or melted butter, that it's fun and it's a one for one substitute. If your recipe calls for the creaming of butter, such as in cookies are inserting cakes. You don't want to cream the butter for as long, I would say 30 seconds max. Because then be vegan butter actually starts breaking down. It actually starts melting. And you don't really want that. It doesn't really do what it's supposed to do and keep everything creamy. One thing that I will recommend is the addition of shortening. Shortening has a higher melting temperature, so it does not melt as quickly. If your recipe is calling for a creaming of butter, you might want to mix in either half shortening and half butter or maybe one part shortening and a two parts butter just to make sure that everything doesn't melt. So if you need your fats to be in a solid state, such as for biscuits or maybe you're cutting it into a short crisp pastry. Another option is to freeze your coconut oil So that gets into a quite solid state that you can cut as well. So another option to either chilled butter or chilled shortening. Now, if you're making a pastry recipes such as a croissant or I guess like different kinds of shortcuts. I definitely recommend that you go the half butter half shortening route or just using shortening instead. Again, because of that higher melting temperature, it is less likely to melt in your hands or while you're making it and it will keep your crusts nice and light. So anything when you're talking about like lamination, where you have to put a layer of dough, a layer of fat, a layer of dough, layer of fat. I would definitely recommend doing either a butter and shortening combination or just using shortening. 4. The Incredible Egg: Welcome back to Lesson three. And this time we're gonna be focusing on substitutes for the incredible egg. And for those of you who love and do vegan baking already, you all know that probably the egg is one of the hardest substitute for because eggs do, do so much and finding a substitute for an egg, you need to first understand what is that egg supposed to be doing in my recipe? What does that egg for? So I've broken this section down into three different substitutes, substitutes situations for an egg. So the first one is going to be a general substitute for an egg. So this is when if a recipe calls for a couple of eggs and they don't ask you to do anything special to them. So just putting the eggs, beat it in, and then stick it into the oven. So this could be something for cookies, it's gonna be something for a general cake batter. And in that instance, the egg is really just working as a binder and the yolk will provide a little bit of richness to the cake. It doesn't really do anything to too much for that general use. I recommend, and I'll put this all in the notes at the end. A mix of water, Baking powder, cornstarch to bind, and then some oil to mimic the richness of the egg. I've used this substitute many times for a ton of things like cookies, cakes, cupcakes, muffins, and it works really well all the time. Another option that you might hear is the flax eggs. So basically, when Brown flax seeds are mixed with water, they jealous and they make a mixture thicker. So this type of egg would only be used if a batter or a mixture needed binding or it needed to be thicker, it does nothing in terms of rise. So if you are going to use a flex egg, you might want to consider adding in some baking powder as well. The second case that I am going to talk about is if your recipe calls for whipped egg whites and this becomes a little bit more difficult. Classic vegan technique is to use something called an aqua Farber. Paul Farber is basically the liquid that you get after boiling chickpeas. So the idea behind that, I know it sounds a little bit weird. The idea behind that is once the boil, the chickpeas, a lot of the starches as well as the protein from the chick pea leaves and enters this kind of thicken water mixture. And when you beat this, if it's actually quite amazing, when you beat it, it foams up very, very similarly to egg whites. And I have seen this recipe work really well for moraines. People are able to do that because and also to lighten up cakes. Some of the tips in terms of acrophobia, is, the thicker that liquid, the more concentrated it is, the easier it will be to whip. So sometimes what I will do is after boiling some chickpeas and then having that leftover liquid, I might reduce it down a third until the mixture is fairly thick and then began whipping it up that way and then it becomes a lot easier. So part of the reason that aqua fiber works well for moraines is because moraines are cooked at a low temperature and just mixed with a little bit of sugar. When you mix aka Fava with heavier particles like flower or fats, or that you put it into a hotter type oven. Every single factor makes aquifer but deflate. So outside of that moraine setting, it is really hard to lighten cakes that way. And if you wanted to make, for example, an angel food sponge cake that you cannot yet do with acrophobia. It for the last common way that people would really use is for an egg wash and that is really easily substituted for, I usually brush it with either a little bit of coconut cream because the fat in it helps to Brown either the bread or whatever you're putting it on. Or I will substitute it with a little bit of melted vegan butter. And that usually has a little bit of yellow color to it. And also has the FAD, which will help whatever you're doing, Brown that as well. But now, if that does not work, a very serious formula behind it is I will mix a little bit of water, sugar, and also a little bit of baking powder. If you guys know a lot about food chemistry, you know that baking soda has a very basic pH, and so it makes things brown very quickly. I'll put that recipe and the notes at the end. But be careful with this one because baking soda does Brown things very, very quickly. So you need to be careful just exactly how much you put in. 5. Molecular Gastronomy: Specialty Ingredients: This next section focuses on specialty ingredients because I didn't want to do a vegan bacon class without addressing things like your ogres and your gels and your gums. Because everybody probably thinks that that is what vegan baking is. You need all of these specialty ingredients. But hopefully I've shown you that there are plenty of just natural ingredients that you can get easily at the grocery store to mimic these kinds of things. So first off, in terms of baking, what you're going to find is that a lot of these gelling agents or gelatinizes agents, they fall under something called your hydrocolloid or your gums. And essentially, they are these particles that just soak up water and then either end up thickening it or justifying it so that it's kind of like this solid jelly substance. So when you use it in different formulations or when you use it in different amounts, what these end up doing is it can also thicken up your liquid and then make it easier for something to, for example, foam up. So today I'm going to go through three really easy ones that I found in grocery stores and then online as well. And I'll go through the different ingredients with you-all. The first one that I'm going to be doing is Auger. Auger is really easy to get over-the-counter. Everybody knows about it and vegan baking, and it comes from a red type of seaweed and it's pretty much polysaccharides and a little bit of a pectin substance as well that really forms a nice kind of Gela flying gelatinizes agents. Those of you who have had auger before, you know that the bite is actually a little bit different from gelatin. With gelatin it's very springy, very bouncy, whereas with auger, it almost breaks. It's a jelly that breaks when you eat it. But consequently, you can make a lot of your different yellows, your different puddings from that. And you can also thicken up an agent if you want. And it's about 70 or 80% fiber, so it really fills you up. And it's a pretty all-natural type of ingredient if you want to use it. So the next product that I wanted to talk about, what's something that I actually found very easily in the baking aisle, and it's something called veggie gel. The gel is a vegetarian setting agent for a wide variety of products. And they talk about souffles, jellies, Muse's, cheese cakes, and terrain. So what this bench gel, because vegetarian gelatin powder is actually made of is hemagglutinin. And Lotus gum. Locus being dumb is actually a thickener and a stabilizer derived from the seed of caribou trees. And it's known to create a pretty nice creamy texture. It'll help reduce ice crystal growth. So it's really good for things like ice creams and sauces and anything that you're going to be putting into the freezer as well. So the second ingredient is carried human, and it's extracted from red and purple seaweed. It's also known as irish moss. And traditionally it's really been used mostly as a thickener and a gelling agent. Finally, the last one was one that I actually found online, but I had been seeing a lot of products that width up lately and this is something called Easy width. You're supposed to just add it in a small amount to any liquid. And really it helps it foam up. And so you can essentially turn anything into a whipped cream. On the label it says, you can make Muse's moraines, whipped yogurts, and stabilized foam from this. So really it claims to Vbus miraculous product and what's easy whip is made out of is actually methylcellulose and xanthan gum. So what I found with easy whip is very much like aqua file, but it does have things where when you add to it, such as large particles like flower that's heavier, does tend to deflate the foam. Easy with works actually fairly well when you add in fats, so it doesn't dissolve that way, which makes it really nice for things like ice creams or maybe if you wanted to do like a whipped custard, that would seem to work. But it does have the potential of deflating because I would still say it is a fairly gentle foam. I think without the addition of heavier types of particles, easy whip does seem to stay aerated for a really long time. But if you do introduce heavier particles are heavier substances, it, it will actually deflate. Some of the reasons why I don't always use these ingredients such as your methylcellulose and you're different kinds of gums is because used in larger quantities, it might not be great for your digestive tracks. So that is something that I always note. Things like auger are things like pectin. I still use pretty regularly. But as I had mentioned in the beginning, there are plenty of just natural ingredients or very readily found ingredients in the grocery store that you can do the same thing width, but it's just nice to know that there are these additional ingredients where if you have a specific case that you'd like to use it for, it's nice to add that to your baking repertoire and also your baking arsenal. Should you wish. 6. How to Veganize a Recipe: Hi everyone, Welcome back to lesson four. And after we did the three previous lessons for substitutes, I thought it would definitely be a really good idea for me to take you guys through a few recipes and show you guys how I would substitute for that. And on the bottom in the project description, I'll leave you guys with actually a recipe of your own. And for homework if you guys can tell me how you would substitute for the ingredients. So when I'm reading recipes that are not vegan, that I want to find vegan substitutes for or that I want to vegan eyes. What I first do is I read through the whole recipe, look through the ingredients, and look through the directions as well. Because what is important about substitution is to understand what that ingredient is doing in this particular recipe. Okay, So let us first go to, I'm going to actually pick a couple of recipes from the BBC. So the first one is called next level, key lime pie. So we're gonna go to the pastry shells first. We have our flower almonds, ginger icing sugar. Okay, we have the 125 grams of cold butter as well as two egg yolks. I generally know what the butter and the egg yolks are going to be four. But if we go over to the directions portion of it, pulse your flower, ginger, and better in a food processor until it gets to breadcrumb stage, then add the egg yolks and pulse until the pastry dough comes together. So for this one, they are not really doing that much for the butter at all. You don't need the butter to be whip, you don't need it to be creamed. It's really just meant to act as a little bit of liquid, as a little bit of fat to keep that pastry nice and tender, but also the buying the pastry as well. And the same thing is used for the egg yolk. Yolk just add a little bit more liquid, but in the form of fats to again bind the pastry, but then the fats will keep the pastry kinda nice. And light. For that. I'm easy substitutes. I'm just going to go with our typical vegan butter. And then for the egg yolk, I'm actually going to go probably two tablespoons per each egg yolk with some coconut cream or some coconut milk that will provide enough fat to keep the pastry nice and light, but then also provide a little bit of liquid to bind that shell together. Now for the filling, we have 397 grams of condensed milk. That may be tricky, right? 66 egg yolks, so very rich. We have sugar, we have lines and we have lemon. So from understanding how fillings work, I know that the condensed milk is going to be really used as a somewhat of a binding agent and something that is already very thick in texture. And then the egg yolks are going to be used as fat, the creaminess for flavor. But then now the egg yolks are really going to be used for something that really binds the filling together. For condensed milk, a very easy recipe for that would just be to take either some coconut milk or if you wanted to lighten it up, use some soy milk and add a good amount of sugar to it and just boil that until it reduces the sugar will help them pick up whatever non-dairy milk that you're using. And you actually end up with a good, nice thick mixture of condensed milk For six egg yolks. So I know that the egg yolk is also used a little bit for color in addition to the binding and adding the richness. In terms of color, I might add a little bit of turmeric. Turmeric, the Indian spice. It is very strong, but if you put a little bit in, it just makes everything yellow. So I think I would do something like that for richness. I'm going to continue with the coconut milk, probably around two tablespoons per egg yolk. And then for the binding agent. Now this is going to be huge because everything else in this recipe, the lines and lemons, that's not going to bind anything. So for binding, I am probably going to be using some cornstarch in here. So turmeric coconut milk as well as cornstarch that is going to provide the richness that you need, the binding elements that you need, and then that little bit of yellow color that, that egg yolks do give. Then finally for the cream, so that nice whipped cream up on top of a key lime pie. We have a double cream. The serious stuff, some sugar, some vanilla extract, and some sour cream. So this one's going to be very easy for the double cream. I'm going to go with a full fat coconut cream. I'm going to stick it into the refrigerator overnight until it gets almost solid, nice and thick. I'm going to beat it until it gets too. Soft. Peaks are pretty much all you can get. Then for the sour cream, I might actually, if I wanted to make sure that this, this, this cream on top maintains a very thick consistency instead of just normal vegan yogurt for sour cream, I might, if you guys have it, go with a vegan Greek yogurt, which is extra thick. Or if you don't have Greek yogurt, you just want to take a piece of cheese cloth and then put the vegan yogurt over and let it just kind of drain for a couple of hours. And then you're gonna get a much thicker yogurt from that. And that's going to function very much like your sour cream. So there you guys go. I have taken you through one of these recipes, so it's actually pretty easy. So now I want you guys to do the same to my recipe down below and tell me what your substitutes would be for it and why. 7. Demo: Vanilla Sponge Cake Recipe: Welcome to lesson five, everyone, the final lesson in this vegan begging course, I really hope that you guys have all enjoyed it as a tree. I'm going to give you guys my foolproof vanilla cake recipe. I honestly use it for everything like birthday cakes, wedding cakes, cupcakes. It never fails me. I always mix up perfectly and moist and light. So I hope you guys all enjoyed this one. So today I'm gonna show you a really easy, egoless yellow cake. It takes a couple of substitutes, but you're going to end up with the most moist, the most delicious cake ever. So the first thing I'm gonna do is to combine my soy milk with apple cider vinegar. And that essentially creates a thick vegan butter milk. And later on that will interact with my baking soda and create a really nice and bubbly and light cake. So the first substitute I'm going to mention is just a general custard powder. So I have some flour in there as well as two tablespoons of this bird's custard powder, which honestly is just cornstarch. Cornstarch with a little bit of vanilla flavoring and a little bit of yellow food coloring. So if you have that great. If you don't just substitute for cornstarch and we will deal with the vanilla flavor later. Now, this next one is a non skip. It is Indian black salt. And anybody who knows, if you want an Aggie flavor, you have to add the black salt. So I'll put the link down below for that. And then afterwards just general ingredients. We have some baking soda, some salt, some sugar, and just mix all of the dry ingredients together. So that was just some of our buttermilk, some vanilla, and then a little bit of vegetable oil. And a cool thing about this recipe is if you want it to make your own cake mix, you could totally do that and just mix all of the dry ingredients together and then put a note to whoever you're giving it to. How much buttermilk to add, how much vanilla to add, a cetera, et cetera. And you have yourself cake mix. So you can see that as soon as we added our baking soda from the dry mix to the apple cider vinegar, soy milk. In the liquid mix that they immediately react together and get all nice and bubbly. So what this means is you absolutely need to have a hot oven, preheat your oven even before you make this recipe so that it's all nice and hot. And as this thing is bubbling, you want to just put it into the oven. It will bake up nice and high and light and fluffy. This went into the oven for around 25 minutes and you can see how nice and fluffy and light it gets. It does turn out a little bit goofy. So if you were making a layered cake, chances are you're going to have to slice off a bit off of the top chefs piece. So that's okay. So as you can see, no eggs, no problem. I use this cake all the time as just a general vanilla cake and it's so easy to make.