Think Spring!

It's mid-April - I'm hearing birds chirp more, buds are starting to appear and I'm thinking spring. In excitement for the coming season that lasts a mere 2-3 weeks up here in Maine, I created a new cupcake called "Think Spring." It's a vegan lemon cupcake with berry filling, topped with vanilla icing, a blackberry and some lemon zest - and it is yummers!

These cupcakes were my first experimentation with a "filled" cupcake, which seems to be all the rage right now. I used a cupcake corer from Williams Sonoma, and I must say, if you want to fill your cupcakes, get a cupcake core; it makes the job so much easier and much less messier! They're only $5 and are nice and compact and easy to clean. 

Filled Think Spring cupcakes, pre frosting

So I baked up the Think Springs last Saturday with an upcoming cupcake job I'm doing for a friend's graduation party in mind. I've had a bunch of taste-testers and have heard that they're awesome and that they don't taste vegan. It's interesting that people always need to qualify food as "tasting vegan" or not "tasting vegan." Vegan just means there are no animal products in whatever the product is - it doesn't mean that the cupcake contains ingredients the majority of us aren't familiar with. I'm sure most of us have had margarine in some form, flax seed, flour, sugar, fruit juices, applesauce...all normal things, I promise :o) But when someone says, "This doesn't even taste vegan!" I take it as a compliment. I think that vegan baking got a bad wrap at some point because a lot of vegan bakers didn't understand the world of substitutions and the chemistry going on in our ovens, and so a lot of vegan baked goods came out tasting grainy, seedy, bland, or dry. This certainly does not describe what I've been baking up! 

You may have noticed from my other blog or the From Scratch and Sniff Facebook group that I recently got engaged. We got engaged a few weeks ago before the ring was actually ready. On Tuesday we got the call that the ring was ready, and after returning home, I was surprised with a second proposal. My fiance had been doing a photo-shoot with the Think Spring cupcakes and asked to borrow the ring so he could get a shot. He came up behind me in the kitchen with the ring sticking up out of the top of the cupcake, and proposed again. And of course, I said yes again! Then we shared the cupcake, after he put the ring back on my finger. It was perfection. 

New Name!

I've been working with a little focus group on renaming/rebranding my baking service to more clearly reflect my style. We're down to two options:

The Baker's Apron

OR

xo bakery

What do you think?? What do you imagine when you hear either one? Which would you rather visit? Be part of the fun and help us re-define my vegan baking service!

Change, Change, Change

It's official - From Scratch & Sniff is going to be a 100% bona fide vegan bakery. As of the 1st of January, my fiance and I changed to a vegan diet and have decided this is the life for us. Not only are we cooking compassionately and promoting conservation, we're losing weight and feeling incredibly more healthy. It's fantastic!

This change in our diets left me with a problem though. How could I change my ideals and habits around eating, but still use eggs and cream and butter in my baking? I was nervous as I began to dive into the world of vegan baking. I'd tried vegan baked goods before, always with the same thought, "This is dry, dense, and tastes more like health food than a dessert." Although I'm all for health food, I believe that when we want dessert, dessert we shall eat! If I want a healthy snack at night, I don't grab a cookie, I reach for an apple, and so I began to worry that my baking would lose it's desserty qualities.

Not so! Around my birthday, good friends of ours gave me The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. What I love about this book is the in-depth exploration into the chemistry behind baking. I have learned the methods and madness behind substitutions and have tried out several of her recipes to get a feel for how each substitution works.

Vegan Blueberry-Orange Bundt Cake from The Joy of Vegan Baking

Photo by Justin Lewis, filmaperture Photography

After practicing a bit, I started a new baking notebook, rolled up my sleeves and got to work! So far I have veganized 6 of my standard recipes:

-Kelly's Oreo Truffles
-Italian Polenta Cake with Orange Marmalade Glaze
-Ginger Cookies
-Awesome Crunch
-Irish Cream Cupcakes
-Treasure Chest Cookies
-Cranberry Almond Biscotti

Vegan Treasure Chest Cookies

Photo by Justin Lewis, filmaperture Photography

Vegan Kelly's Oreo Truffles (Chocolate, White Chocolate, & Peanut Butter)

Photo by Justin Lewis, filmaperture Photography

Italian Polenta Cake with Orange Marmalade Glaze

Photo by Justin Lewis, filmaperture Photography

And so far - I've received very positive feedback and have even been told that some of the vegan versions are BETTER than the non-vegan ones! Horrah! The goal is to make them taste the same or better, and thus far I'm succeeding.

The next step - we've realized that maybe it's time for a name/branding change. Although From Scratch & Sniff has served me well for almost a year now, it doesn't quite convey the type of baking I'm trying to offer, and on top of that, there are already two bakeries in town related to kitties/animals. So I'm going through the difficulty of trying to decide what sort of image I want to convey.

Some people are telling me not to include "vegan" in the name - to try to "trick" people into ordering/coming in. Some are telling me I should not only offer vegan treats, but should supplement my stock with some "regular" baked goods. I know want to stand proud and not shy away from the fact that I'm vegan and this is what I have to offer. I don't want to return to cooking with animal products and I think there's a real market for it in Portland; there aren't any fully vegan bakeries up here yet. I want my name to reflect the goodness and simplicity of my product. At least I know these things for sure - now I just need a name and logo, ideas are welcome and much appreciated!

Vegan Baking Explorations

This past weekend was the weekend of baking blunders and victories. My friend Amanda's Lady Gaga themed birthday part was on Saturday and I wanted to bake her a vegan cake that was splendiferiously Gaga inspired.

My plan was to bake a 6 layered cake, each layer a color of the rainbow, layer orange cream between the layers, cover the cake with fondant and create either a Gaga crown or a roller derby skate from gum paste for the top (Amanda's a Maine Roller Derby Girl with the Port Authorities- go check them out!). That was my plan.

However, plans can go awry. Although I've changed to a vegan diet for the new year (check out my other blog, The Vegan Explorer), I haven't quite gotten a full handle on vegan baking yet. I started baking at 9:30am on Saturday - first mistake, waiting until the day the cake is due. The first cake was a total disaster. It didn't rise well, it formed a strange hard sugary crust, and tasted awful! EW! I fed it to the trashcan after attempting to fix it twice.

Push the clock forward to noon. I start debating, do I stick to my vision and try again or do I make my no-fail Vegan Italian Polenta Cake instead? It was a toughie. I decided to go for it again, I'm no quitter! So I reformulated my recipe and started over. The layers were thin and a little bit sticky, but tasted great so I kept going. Fast forward to 4:30 pm. All of the layers are completed and cooled, time to start stacking and create my vegan orange butter cream. Ut oh, here comes trouble. How do you make "butter" cream without butter?? Well, the first attempt was a disaster. Somehow it started separating and just looked gross. The second version was a little better but not perfect...though I used it because I was running out of time.

Rather than take the time to roll out fondant for a cake that was already sort of uneven and time was running short (it was already 6:30), I made a vegan vanilla icing (thanks to the help of one of my boyfriend's cookbooks) and my boyfriend helped with icing the outside of the cake. He did a beautiful job of evening out the cake.

Still, I was totally deflated. I didn't think this cake would taste good and I just wasn't happy with the quality - it was not my usual highly polished work. My boyfriend convinced me not to pitch it into the trash and we left for the party. I'm really grateful that he got me to bring it because it seemed to be a big hit! Amanda and her friends appeared to love it and dubbed the cake "Gayke" - love it.

The Gayke!
Photo by Justin Lewis, filmaperture Photography

The Gayke's rainbowy layers!

Photo by Justin Lewis, filmaperture Photography 

On Sunday, my boyfriend and I had our second annual Hot Chocolatey Crafty Night and I thought I'd bake my Polenta Cake. I made the cake, which turned out beautifully, but when I went to make the glaze (a recipe I made without really writing down what I did...a no no for me!) it came out horribly. I went through three versions until I got something I was mildly happy with but for some reason it did not come out the same way it had the first time (and I ended up scalding myself with boiling hot marmalade in the process and am now donning two blisters on my face and one on my finger - boyfriend medic to the rescue!). I still need to figure out what happened  - yes it was still good, but it was not the same glaze I'd made a few weeks before. Gah! Frustrations!

And through all this frustration, my boyfriend stuck by my side. He was incredibly supportive, encouraging, made me laugh, pitched in to help, played doctor to my wounds, and helped me realize that it really is okay to mess up sometimes. I don't have to be perfect and I can learn through making mistakes. He certainly is a good guy :)

Kitchen Experimentation at its finest

I've been doing some experimenting in the kitchen lately. A friend asked if I could do a cheesecake for her boyfriend's birthday and I told her that although cheesecake is not my forte, I would take a stab at it.

I ended up combining about 4 different recipes and creating something that, in the final stages, resembled none of my original recipes. It was a fluffy lemony-cheesecake with a graham-cracker-oreo crust and a thick raspberry sauce, and it was delicious. I'm hoping to try it out again because, although it was a successful creation, I wasn't able to eliminate the deadly cracks that cheesecakes often get. I tried decreasing the oven temp and leaving the cake in the oven after it was finished for an hour with the door open. Next time, I'm going to try the water-bath method. We shall see!



New creation number two- Peanut Butter Cheesecake Truffles- big hit! These round little bites of chocolate, cheese and peanut buttery goodness are a great compliment to the oreo ones already on my menu. I've also been experimenting with truffle decorating and they're starting to look really pretty. I'm going to begin experimenting with other flavors and rather than cream cheese, perhaps marscapone. I'm pretty sure they're going to be delish :) I had made a batch of the regular oreo one's for the party and they were a big hit!



Yesterday, as my boyfriend sawed wood on my couch, I decided to re-vist my vegan cookie recipe. One of our summer staffers at the festival I work for can't eat anything with sugar in it and boy, did I feel bad when I brought in cookies and he couldn't eat a single one. So I told him I'd bake him a batch of my vegan cookies which don't take any sugar. In the past, I've used applesauce in them, but I tried vegetable oil and used tiny chunks of apple instead. I like the texture the chunks give to the cookies juxtaposed with the mushy bananas and sticky dates and raisins. All in all, I think they came out fairly well.

I'm certainly looking forward to having more time to experiment. Once the Festival's over in August, I plan to dedicate a lot more time to my kitchen "lab." I'm also planning on having a tasting party with friends and others to get feedback on my menu. Get ready and come hungry!