The 2 Classic Desserts That Are Easier Than You Think To Make Vegan
With all the measuring and dishes involved, regular baking can feel intimidating enough. But add on the responsibility of choosing the right egg or dairy substitute and calculating the correct ratios to substitute them at, and it's enough to scare off even the most well-intentioned of the vegan-curious. Fortunately, Tasting Table has plenty of resources for those who are learning the ropes of vegan baking — including a list of the absolute best egg substitutes along with plenty of tips for baking with them, vegan butter, and non-dairy milk. But if you're going to start anywhere, the best place to begin your vegan baking journey is with cookies and brownies.
Of all the sweet treats you can make vegan, these two classic desserts are much easier to adapt than you'd think. To be certain of the best way to go about it, we spoke to Nisha Vora, the author of "The New York Times" bestselling cookbook, "Big Vegan Flavor", and owner of Rainbow Plant Life vegan-cooking website, for tips. Vora spent an entire year experimenting and developing her vegan chocolate-chip cookie recipe, and she tested her brownies eight times to get them right — just so you know that her tips are tried and true.
Use a flax egg for vegan chocolate chip cookies
Nisha Vora says, "You can make incredible bakery-style chocolate chip cookies that no one will guess are vegan with pretty standard ingredients. The only thing you really need to substitute are the eggs." While that certainly makes it sound easy, there are a lot of different egg substitutes to choose from — and some are better than others for certain recipes. But, when it comes to cookies, Vora's advice is to go with a simple mixture of flaxseed meal and warm water, commonly known as a flax egg, to get a nice structure and chewiness in your finished cookie.
Simply measure a tablespoon of ground flaxseeds and mix that with 2.5 tablespoons of warm water, wait about 15 minutes for them to gel — and you have yourself a flax egg. This measurement is equivalent to one regular egg, so you'll want to adjust it to accommodate however many your chocolate-chip cookie recipe calls for. When you're done waiting, give them another mix and then add to the sugar and vanilla extract, and your butter, which can be substituted with a vegan butter stick at a 1:1 ratio.
"There are so many great vegan butter blocks/sticks on the market these days that you won't taste a difference," says Vora. Tasting Table ranked 12 of them, to help make your choice a bit easier. And as for the chocolate chips, most dark chocolate is already vegan and can be chopped up for this recipe, but if you're looking for actual chocolate chips, you can buy Enjoy Life vegan baking dark chocolate morsels on Amazon.
Fudgy yet chewy vegan brownies need aquafaba
Most people would assume that a classic dessert such as brownies, so heavy on eggs, would be tricky to make vegan successfully — but Nisha Vora says that achieving fudgy yet chewy vegan brownies isn't hard to achieve. She says, "Brownies are a little bit trickier since they have a higher proportion of eggs, but a simple egg substitute of whipped aquafaba, plus using more flour than you would in a traditional brownie recipe will provide the structure and lift needed."
Aquafaba is the liquid found in a can of chickpeas, and it's used as an egg substitute in recipes like our fluffy, almost-eggy chickpea scramble and vegan-friendly tiramisu. Whipped with sugar for several minutes, aquafaba is ideal in brownies because it produces the same delicate and flaky exterior that non-vegan brownies get from eggs. Paired with a fudgy interior — which Vora achieves by folding the whipped sweetened aquafaba with melted vegan butter, melted dark chocolate, flour, and cocoa powder — your vegan brownies will be irresistible.
While using extra flour will give your brownies structure, it's also important you don't go overboard. This could easily result in a dry brownie, completely compromising the fudgy texture hiding beneath the shiny, crinkly top. Vora's recipe calls for 1.5 cups to make nine large brownies, and be sure to measure using the spoon and level method to make sure you don't add any more than that.