vegan baker

I am sorry, but it is impossible to photograph bread pudding without producing an image this unappealing. It’s just slimy, gooey, gummy stuff. That’s what makes it good.

I’ve made vegan bread pudding once before. It’s simple enough. You take a pile of cubed, dry bread and you pour a mixture of soymilk, sugar and Christmas-y spices over it. You let everything sit for half an hour until the milk is soaked up and then you bake the mess for about an hour. Poof. Bread pudding.

I want to improve the end result, good as it is. A loose bread pudding is generally baked in a bath (the pan goes in a larger container of simmering water inside the oven to help the eggs set properly), and I want some of that custard quality to shine through. I’ve baked a couple of puddings tonight, one with soymilk and agar flakes and one with soy creamer and a shot of good bourbon. The rest is unchanged.

Results? I liked the consistency of the agar-gelled fluid, but the flakes became little nuggets. When the pudding cooled I had something disconcertingly Jello jiggler-y. As such, agar’s out, though if you want to try it I suggest powder over flakes and a period of boiling pre-bake. The second pudding was something of a revelation. Creamer definitely beat out soymilk for mouthfeel and eggy texture (fat will do that), and the bourbon gave the vanilla flavor a pleasant complexity. This will be my working recipe from now on. I’ll keep testing and update as I go.

In Japan, white chrysanthemums are funeral flowers. In Jersey, I have put one (made of gum paste) on a cupcake.

I am about a week into the gum paste flowers, and have already seen some improvement. I’ve been impressed by how streamlined the Wilton process is, and I recommend it, despite the sticker shock ($21, plus miscellany.) Any OCD-prone spazz can do it if I can.

Anyway, here’s today’s work: two gum paste orchids on a chocolate cupcake with some of the leftover lemon buttercream icing. Incidentally, my New Year’s resolution was to make a cake with realistic orchids on it (I was running a fever for the entire month of December, so this is not as weird as it might seem. Or it is.) Close to the finish line.

Sometimes I am a bit conflicted about whether or not I should tell my fellow dessert eaters that the cake I’ve baked is vegan. It gets less and less awesome as the years pass to still be forced to spend the entire length of a vegan meal/course talking about the very fact that it is vegan. The best way to eat a meal is to eat it together, so that it is clear that the food is vegan, but without a lot of discussion of that fact. I oppose shouting “VEGAN! HA!” at people you’ve bothered to feed.

If you spare your guests the vegan label as they’re digging in and then spring it on them later, they’re forced to admit that something they enjoyed was animal product-free, which is often quite a revelation. But, in addition to denying you your piece of cake, this method puts your omni friends on the defensive and makes you a shill. No one likes a shill*.

If you can let the taste of your food speak for itself, you can stop every single vegan meal from freaking out your guests. They acclimate, give you less crap, and hopefully take you a little more seriously**. You also make yourself look tolerant, fulfilled by your own decisions, and, of course, well-fed. You don’t want to be classed with door-to-door religious salesmen, those people who talk constantly about their crash diets, and workout freaks. To avoid this, just eat well and give your questioners more respect than they give you, by not insisting on talking about what they do and don’t eat. When else in life is “being a good example” defined as eating a lot of rich, sweet cakes and cookies?

So I tell the truth that the cake is vegan. I try to do it early, long before forks hit plates, so there’s a chance that an ongoing conversation will distract from the lack of eggs. Even when I know I’m feeding someone difficult, who openly laughs at what is important to me, I am still honest. But I have to admit that the whole “VEGAN! HA!” thing gets damn tempting once in a while.

*Yes, this is a Simpsons quote.
**No promises on this one.