THE VEGAN BAKING BIBLE

KAROLINA TEGELAAR, PAVILION GB, $55

We need to talk about aquafaba. Hailed as the miracle egg replacement of vegan baking, it’s used a lot here, but don’t imagine it’s as easy as merely draining a tin of chickpeas. This book explains exactly how to use it, and other vegan ingredients, to get the right results for the each type of cake, with reassuring step-by-step pictures. The ultimate ‘how-to’ book, it’s almost textbook-like in its painstaking detail: if you’ve ever wondered ‘What happens if I bake a cake with tofu instead of egg (or indeed 14 other egg replacements)?’, ‘What if I use twice as much fat?’ or ‘Can I half the mixing time?’ then Dr Karolina has put in 10 years of hard work and rigorous trial-and-error to give you the answers, and the show-and-tell photos

demonstrate exactly what will happen. It’s not the prettiest of cookbooks, but comprehensive it certainly is, and it pays to read all the introductory text before you get baking. The author says, “I hate the low standards that are so common in vegan baking. I have hated them ever since I became a vegan over a decade ago, when I realized what people would accept and what was served as vegan.the whole point of baking is that it should be luxurious and decadent.” So, if you’re tired of the well-meaning but brick-like bars, sad slices and leaden cakes so often offered as vegan bakes, here you have the wherewithal to make sky-high layer cakes, fluffy Genoise and even pastries such as pain au chocolate, meringues, biscuits, pancakes, pies, brownies, gingerbread, ice cream and yeasted doughs. There are interesting Scandavian flavours, too, such as Swedish kladdkaka, snoddas (love cakes) and syltgrotta (thumb cookies). Come here for all your favourites made vegan without compromising on taste. Look out for it in stores in August. TW