My Adventure in Vegan Baking
So, my first disclaimer is; I did cheat. Processed Sugar and MooCow Milk was used. Reasons are included thru the post. Secondly, I am not a health expert or a expert on Vegan lifestyle. I was very blessed that on this day, about 5 years after I was born, the heavens brought forth my personal little expert on Vegan food and I am so lucky every day to know his little gold-mind of epic treasures and knowledge.
First was the shopping. Went to my Janesville Basic's Cooperative with phone in hand, as I put the recipe on a word doc to read off of my phone, and started searching for what I needed and didn't have. Already I know Milk, baking powder and soda, & Salt where going to be things I used what I had. Things I didn't have was The Choco chips I wanted (Enjoy Life Brand), spelt flour, xylitol, stevia, apple sauce, & vanilla bean ( cuz it just better than an extract).
The photo at the top of the post is the inside of the bag. I found xylitol at first in a large bag and panicked cuz i didn't want that much, nor knew what to do with it, then found the smaller lil shaker which I was okay with. In fact I read the back of it some cuz I never really knew what it was and apparently its basically a sucrose substitute. It also noted that while sugar and sucrose are immediate contributors to tooth decay; xylitol is in fact less calories and does not promote it at all. So a major PLUS! The Stevia however was a bust as they had the same style containers but was over $10.00 - $14.00 depending which you got. The cheaper $7 packets I was also not exactly willing to buy knowing that after this recipe; i'd be left with alot of something I dunno what to do with. Bear in mind I shopped with my mind expecting either epic win or epic fail. Never done vegan baking.
I also opted for MooCow Milk instead of Nut/Rice milk since again I was kinda not 100% confident it would work out and Basic's only carried brands I feel leave a lot of aftertaste. The spelt flour was a complete fail as Basics somehow didn't carry it. So I used some gluten-free red mill APF (All purpose flour), which I have alot more yet to use somehow. I beleive this is sneekilly made of chickpeas due to the smell and tiny chickpea aftertaste the dry mix had thru the process. Yes I tried the dry stuff out... gotta make sure tis right yaknow! n.-V
I wont go thru the entire recipe here; that's the whole fun of linking the source site. And I can't be the only victim of the hungry's from browsing her site/blog. I pretty much just added all the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix em together. Tiny secret for you blog reader types. At first I instagramed how it was kinda dough-y and might been from too many chips. Turns out it was from poor math skills. It calls for 1/8th tsp for baking soda. I had only a 1/4th tsp measure and for some reason my poor instant math decided that 8 is doubt 4 so I put in 2 1/4th tsp. of baking soda. I later googled to make sure and sure nuff, shoulda used only half a 1/4th tsp. Math lesson learned for next time. So mine shown is much heavier, BUT that took nothing away from the taste and chocolate epic-ness, granted I did still use too many chips.
So then you add the wet stuff and since I used vanilla bean, only meant my milk and apple sauce. The amount of milk when ya look at it in it's own container (somehow thought at first would have been easier) is no much at all. Made me feel not as bad about cheating with real MooCow stuff. The Apple Sauce is a trick ive heard of before many a time on even Food Network to make cakes more moist without extra water or liquids. This was very moist! Also make note in above photo I did add the chocolate chips as dry. The main flaw in my choice, which to be honest it's never a flaw having too much chocolate, was I used what I could get of Enjoy Life Brand... that was tiny chips. I think Katie used regular sized ones and thus my tiny ones of the same measure took less space per chip in the measuring cup to add more chocolate per cup. For a less weighed down chocolate cake, use big uns or maybe I guess I'll use less tiny ones. :3
Mix.... Mix... Mix.... This is where I suddenly felt as if I had made a grave mistake attempting this as the chickpea flour smell now finds it's way to your nose. As a non-vegan person... that makes me question life the second it smells more like hummus than cookies. I rolled with it though.
Also forgot to mention that the recipe calls for Stevia, which as noted previously, was way too expensive. I did in fact sub with the processed sugar as noted on the recipe as an option. Again the amount however is actually very small considering the norm. I could have just added more xylitol, but again having not any knowledge of this item and my adviser off on Birthday trips; I opted for sugar.
Nukerwaved mine for 1 minutes 20 seconds; looked at it all " ehoh" and gave it another 30 seconds. The 30 seconds didn't hurt it, but again Im sure my prior math mistake is what made things iffy looking. Note the pic of it above. Chocoholic Overload, yet amazing after 2-3 minutes of cooling and some MooCow Milk to drink with it ( can ya tell im not a full vegan yet? :D) and just... wow!
I was eating this and it was very hard to stop and take this image for instagram. You can tell the chocolate chips all sunk to the bottom of the cup I used ( a hot cocoa cup!) so again had I not botched the soda; I bet, while still a tiny death cake of chocolate... woulda have been more fluffy. And by death I mean you may hurt someone if can't get another one. X3 JaNe!
