The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes: Amazing Cookies, Cakes, Muffins, Pies, Brownies and Breads Book

This review was originally published on V for Vegan as part of Veganmofo IV; please click though for additional commentary and photos.

Cookies, muffins and cakes, oh my!

Earlier in the year, I happened upon a giveaway of The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes; publisher Ulysses Press was offering up a few copies of the recently-released book for review. Since I was already a fan of author Kris Holechek through her NOM! NOM! NOM! BLOG (and, perhaps more to the point, am unable to pass up a vegan freebie!), I jumped at the chance. Six+ months later, and I think I've finally tried enough of the recipes to offer up a review.

The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes features recipes for a variety of baked goods, grouped into the following categories: cookies; bars; muffins; quick breads; cakes; pies and tarts; pastries; yeasted treats; frostings, icings and toppings; and children's recipes ("Kids in the Kitchen"). The recipes include some standards (Shorbread; Best Banana Bread; Basic Pie Crust; Rosemary Focacia; Going, Going, Gone! Gingerbread) as well as a number of more creative concoctions (Strawberry Lemonade Cheespie; Gas Station Pie; Garden Muffins; Mocha-damia Bars; Blackest Forest Cake). Each recipe is rated for difficulty and prep time, with one "whisk" being the simplest and five "whisks," the most challenging.

In addition to ten sections listed above, Holechek begins the book with a handy introductory chapter. Particularly useful for novices such as myself, this "vegan baking 101" guide covers the fundamentals, such as the ups and downs and when-to's of various egg replacers, sugars and sweeteners, and leaveners; the best way to melt chocolate; essential ingredients; and must-have kitchen utensils and gadgets. (Whereas I'd been resistant to buying cooling racks for quite some time, Holecheck - with no small help from Shane! - finally convinced me of the need.)

Over time, I tried a number of recipes, including....

* The Lemon Almond Bling Muffins (page 66), which are flavored with almond extract and topped off with a delicious mix of lemon, sugar and raw almonds.

* The Choco-Chai Coffee Cake (page 89), which wasn't as strongly flavored as I'd hoped (the chai flavoring comes from chai tea; in future attempts, I think I'll double the number of teabags used from 5 to 10), but yummy nonetheless.

* The Best Banana Bread (page 70), which was good, though not the best I've ever tasted (that distinction goes to Shane's Super-Awesome Super Vegan Bananer Bread, which is - hello! - super awesome!):

* The Chocolate Raspberry Swirl Muffins (page 62), whose infusion of raspberry preserves is lovely.

* The Raspberry Lime Muffins (page 68), reinvented as Lemon Blueberry Muffins (hey, I had neither frozen raspberries nor lime zest at the time, but I was able to find frozen blueberries and lemon zest; a hungry vegan's gotta do what a hungry vegan's gotta do!).

* The Best Boston Cream Pie (page 91), lovingly baked for me by my husband on my birthday...though not without a hitch. For some unknown reason, he had trouble getting the cream to thicken up, resulting in a bit of a gooey mess, cream leaking out on all sides of the cake. Even so, it tasted amazing.

Last but not least are the Better-than Breadsticks (page 128), which are a DIY version of "a certain Italian chain restaurant['s]" soft, garlicky, buttery breadsticks. (Perhaps?...Could it be?...The Olive Garden, maybe?) Though I was a bit skeptical of the recipe's one-whisk rating, I was especially looking forward to trying it out, as I too happen to be hooked on this unnamed Italian chain's bottomless baskets of dough-based crack.

Unfortunately, my skepticism was well-deserved; the breadsticks came out...okay. Just...okay. I don't know if we made a mistake with the dough, or baked them a little too long, or whatever, but they were on the dry side. Kind of boring and unimpressive. Needless to say, nowhere near as addictive as the original.

To be fair, I think it likely that the Mr. and I just weren't up to this particular challenge. Going in, we suspected that it would be a tricky recipe - those professionally made breadsticks are just so. damn. good! - and all things considered, they actually came out better than I thought they would. (They were edible, mkay.) Probably this recipe calls for a higher skill rating, methinks.

All in all, The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes is 150+ pages of pure deliciousness.