vegan baker

In Patagonia. More later.

I haven’t been writing because I have been eating.

(I understand that many people can do those things simultaneously.)

I landed in a quiet town with a tiny, well-designed storefront that sold some of the best pizza I’ve ever had, where they charged $5US for a pie. I skipped cross-country into a town so beautiful I didn’t believe it in the groggy early mornings, a town with a lapis lake and block after block of Macy’s-sized chocolate stores. I rode the lakes down to campfire charred soyburgers and bursting late summer tomatoes.

I’ve been filling up on Rhodesias and Arrufats, on cardboard cones overflowing with perfect fries, on the best ice cream in one of the best countries in the world for ice cream. And it has, of course, all been vegan.

Nonvegans are always shocked to learn that you’re going to be travelling, risking your supposedly silly diet on the circumstances of the road. But Argentina is more than the sum of its steaks. Every country has gems for you to uncover as you run around, missing the view as you read the ingredients. Vegan travel is sometimes difficult, but never impossible, and the last few weeks have been great proof of this, at least for me. There have been some truly stellar bites, and I never once felt like I was missing out. 

It is important to stay friends with people from college so that you have a floor on which to sleep when you decide that it is completely necessary to your happiness to attend a cake decorating school 25 minutes out of a major city which is not yours. This way, you can “hang out” and also advance your “career.”

What am I talking about? Wilton Master Class and my friend Aaron. Aaron and I knew we would be friends forever when I first mended his flaming boxer briefs way back in late adolescence. Now I’m going to get all signed up for some (not vegan at all) cake mastery and drink some (totally vegan Chicago Diner) milkshakes with Aaron. It’ll be good.

As for the Wilton stuff, I am willing to spend a week working with nonvegan stuff for the sake of years of vegan versions that look great. I’m hoping to donate what I make in class to Food Not Bombs or someone else local who’ll know what to do. I am pretty excited, in a RPG sort of way, about being a “master” of a craft.

As previously stated, South American grocers stock black sugar. Increasingly, I suspect that “black sugar” is what they call “brown sugar” here, rather than a proper exotic food, but let’s not talk about that. I want to believe I’ve stumbled upon something rare and wonderful. Anyhow, for a while I didn’t have an oven, and then for a while longer I completely forgot about that bag of sugar I’d wedged behind the potatoes. Then along came fingerprint cookies.

In the future, if I make a brown (or black) sugar based cookie, I’m going to have to add molasses for depth of flavor, but these really were quite good. How can anything be bad with little clumps of jam on top?