Brownie sagas!

Brown rice banana brownies!

One day earlier this summer I went into Capers because I had a couple of hours and wanted to chill out over a coffee.  As I was ordering my mocha (decaf with almond milk!), I noticed that Capers carried vegan spelt brownies*.  I was over the moon!  A real, cake-y, chewy, brownie I could eat!  Now, a brownie + a mocha ended up being way too much chocolate, but it didn't matter, I was inspired - if Capers could do it, so could I!  It was time to try making brownies!

*(Note for those of you who want to try the store-bought version - Capers in Kits no longer sells them, but Whole Foods on Cambie has them in their bakery)

My intentions were great, and I set off googling recipes for spelt brownies, which I could then vegan-ize.  The results: a lot of failures.  This baking endeavor, more than any other, reminded me that allergen-free baking really is an experiment, and often it can go very, very wrong.  Why so disastrous?  The answer: no eggs.  Brownies rely so much more on eggs than flour for their chewy texture - most recipes call for two eggs but only 1/2 cup of flour.  Sometimes, vegan substitutes just don't work, as I quickly proved.

Cookie Shenanigans!

Brown rice flour cookies!

Last week was a week of crazy baking.  A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to learn how to make wheat- and gluten-free cookies.  Since giving up wheat, I'd primarily restricted my baking to cakes & muffins, but I was starting to crave a good cookie.  So I went on a googling spree.  After finding a surprising number of good recipes, I made a short list, and on Monday last week I went shopping.  And Wednesday I started baking.  Well, by Friday, the cookies were all gone, so what was I to do to make more?  So many cookies...by Saturday I definitely had a headache from eating cookies in place of real food.  But, both recipes turned out pretty well, so I thought I'd pass them along.  (Both recipes contain almond butter, by the way, so anyone with nut allergies may want to pass up on this post - sorry!)  See below for spelt-flour super-energizing cookies, and my first stab at a (pretty much) gluten-free chocolate chip cookie (seen above)

Gluten-Free Cooking: Tips & Tricks

First off, I should start this by saying that I am NOT an expert gluten-free baker or chef.  I've been playing around with it for the past few years, but it hasn't had to become a full-on lifestyle choice yet (I still use a fair amount of spelt).  There are many, many food blogs out there that give much more thorough advice on how to manage a gluten-free lifestyle.  And for those of you who are gluten-free but aren't vegan, including eggs in your baking will make life a lot easier.  However, for anyone interested in gluten-free and vegan baking (on a student budget) for beginners, or just wants to read about my own baking experiments, read on.

Gluten-Free Baking: Wherefore and Why

There is so much I could say on this topic, and in fact I've been putting off writing this post for two days because the scope of information is so vast it's intimidating.  So, ultimately, I've opted to split this into two posts: the why, and the how. Later on I will follow up with some more concrete science info to back up my assertions & descriptions, but right now I just wanted to touch on the surface of the issue a bit.

So: gluten-free baking.  Why bother?  It's certainly a major challenge: gluten provides the elasticity and binding that most of us take for granted when baking with flour.  It's a double challenge if, like me, you're attempting gluten-free AND vegan baking, because the other food ingredient that traditionally provides elasticity and binding in baked goods is eggs, and I can't eat those either.  But gluten intolerance is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in society today.  For example, when I used to volunteer at a theatre festival selling ice cream, I was frequently asked which  ice cream products were gluten-free.  People were always excited when they realized I actually knew the answer.  And while I now am trying to follow a gluten-free (or at least gluten-low) diet myself, I actually started learning about gluten-free baking so I could bake for gluten-intolerant friends.  So I'm guessing most readers probably know someone in their life who have issues with wheat or gluten.  But before one can go about accommodating these restrictions, it's important to know what exactly your (or your friend's) sensitivity is.

Vegan Recipe Archives

I recently discovered that wheat has joined my list of forbidden foods.  However, for the past couple of years, when I could still tolerate gluten on occasions, I discovered a whole host of amazing, easy, soy-free, vegan baked goods.  So this is a collection of a few of my favourite vegan baking recipes, in hopes you will all enjoy them even though I no longer can!

Vegan Baking: A How-To

The first major baking-limiting allergies I discovered were dairy and eggs.  While I wasn't primarily motivated by ethics, the end result of these limitations was that I dived head-first into vegan baking.  Even now, as I'm venturing into wheat- and gluten- free baking, the same rules to vegan-izing recipes still apply.  So I thought I'd start out this blog by summarizing the easiest how-to's of vegan baking.  I don't claim originality for any of these ideas, and they can be found all over the internet; but a summary is never harmful and this way I have somewhere I can link when I reference substitutions in future.

My first approach when baking anything vegan is to search for a tried-and-true vegan recipe.  But, if I find an incredible recipe that still has milk or eggs, or if  I really want to make one of the recipes I grew up making as a kid, I know I can always turn to one of the many available substitutes.

Welcome!

Here goes my first shot at an actual blog.  I've always felt super self-conscious about the idea of blogging, because I have a hard time believing people actually want to read what I'm writing.  But when someone suggested to me that I start a food blog, I had to stop and think about it for a minute.  For years, people have asked me to send them recipes; instead, I send them essays.  And between my own food restrictions, and those of my friends, I've certainly learned how to get creative. Therefore, my hope is that I might have something to offer people, even though I am nowhere near as expert as any of the other food blogs I gratefully search for recipes and inspirations.  Thus after spending months and months sharing my food exploits via facebook status updates, I thought I'd move them to a slightly more permanent, coherent form.

My training is in biology, and when I first started working in the lab, I lost all desire to cook for two months.  This is because lab biology is, really, very very similar to baking or cooking: I mix ingredients in a certain order, following a recipe, and then heat and cool my mixtures for varying periods of time (sometimes in water baths) to get a certain product.  The title of my blog comes from one of my favourite images from that first lab: one of our technicians had a blue box of index cards, so reminiscent of my mom's recipe box at home.  When I looked through it, I found lab protocols (how to make a proper Western transfer buffer from scratch, for instance), mixed in with recipes for casseroles and biscuits.  That's what really drove home to me the idea that cooking and lab work are pretty much the same thing with a different context.  (We use Carnation brand milk powder in the lab, the yeast cultures I grow smell like fresh-baked bread, and agar is a nice vegetarian substitute for jello).  And, in addition to all that, there were some AMAZING bakers in that lab, so I had to up my game just for birthdays and journal clubs.

So, welcome to my blog.  Posts will be sporadic, as I embark on new baking adventures, and share some of my past successes.  And, hopefully, at some point I'll be able to indulge my inner biologist by sharing some of the research I've done into food allergies, and the science behind why certain food substitutions work better in certain recipes. Enjoy!  And please let me know if there any kind of recipes you're interested in seeing!