Vegan baking

So last night I stopped by the grocery store on my way home to pick up ingrediants for Lara bars (more on that in a bit). While at the store I found myself looking at the vegan cheese. I have yet to really try many vegan substitutes, not just because I'm scared to (I am a little scared of them) but also because based on my experience with vegetarian meat substitutes they just aren't the same as the real thing. Meat eaters will try veggie burgers or veggie "chicken" nuggets expecting them to taste the same and when they don't often times the substitute it written off as "not good" when really, if viewed for what it is and not what it is trying to be, it is pretty good. Does that make sense? So I didn't want to try vegan cheese because I knew it would be expecting cheese, and when it failed to be exactly like cheese I would think it was gross and never go near it again. (The other reason I've been avoiding it is that on a whole I think "fake" foods should be eaten in moderation and it is a better plan to go with whole, real food as often as possible.)

ANYWAY. I figured I should at least try it, so I picked up a package of "mozzarella" and decided to make some pizza.

I whipped up a dough (does anyone have a REALLY GOOD pizza dough recipe? Mine is fine, but nothing spectacular) and got ready to let the vegan pizza experiment begin.

Then I realized I had no veggies in the house because they all went into the failed stuffed peppers. My solution - cut up the leftover peppers (of which there were many) and throw those on the pizza.

In the end it looked enough like pizza for me to feel okay with this. And then it was time for the "cheese"

I'm clearly excited.

The verdict? It looked like pizza and it mostly tasted like pizza. As I expected the vegan cheese wasn't BAD but it certainly wasn't cheese. It tasted mostly like cheese-whiz and so that was pretty icky. But I can see it being better IN something than ON it, maybe burritos or something like that.


My other vegan food experiment last night was to make some Lara bars. So while my dough was rising I pulled out my food processor. I am a BIG fan of these things and I have been buying them more now that I have to go from work to school with no time for a proper dinner until 10:30pm. The problem is that they are a little on the pricey side. So I did a quick internet search and found some really simple recipes. I decided to try this one, but also copied quite a few from Chocolate Cover Katie's collection.

As is always the case when I cook, the recipe quickly flew out the window. I processed down about half my package of dates, along with some water to soften them up. Then I threw in about 125g of salted cashews (half the package), some brown rice syrup (1/4 cup?), some vanilla (2 tsp?),  a dollop of natural peanut butter (1/2 cup?), and a handful of almonds. All that got processed into a paste and then shaped into bars.

Guys. They are perfect. Identical in taste to something you would buy as a Lara bar - not too sweet, not too nutty, just delicious and healthy. I am pretty excited.

So good! So over all I think my night of vegan cooking/baking went pretty well!