The Joy of Vegan Baking: The Compassionate Cooks' Traditional Treats and Sinful Sweets List Price: $19.95 Sale Price: $12.50 Average Rating:
	Whether you want to bake dairy- and egg-free for health, ethical, or environmental reasons, The Joy of Vegan Baking lets you have your cake and eat it, too! Featuring 150 familiar favorites -- from cakes, cookies, and crepes to pies, puddings, and pastries -- this book will show you just how easy, convenient, and delectable baking without eggs and dairy can be...

Over the past few months, I've been complaining about the results of Jane's vegan baking efforts. Don't get me wrong... she's been complaining too. Overall, we've come to the conclusion that vegan baked goods just aren't as good as traditional baked goods. And while we miss the olden days of Princess Cake (the most amazing cake -- genoise, marzipan, whipped cream, raspberry filling... mmm, princess cake) and other goodies, we're willing to make this "sacrifice." Well, as of today, that's changed. Jane made the vegan brownie recipe from "The Joy of Vegan Baking" ... and oh my god it's amazing.

These brownies are not too sweet. They don't have that "hmm that's different" taste that many vegan baked goods are subject too. These brownies taste exactly like BROWNIES. They're so good that Jane is making me take the remainder in to work tomorrow because she doesn't trust herself to be around them. And she's already planning to make a second batch to welcome our new neighbors this weekend. Who needs Starbuck's vegan brownies when you can make these at home.

Jane and I were out tooling around today and had a large lunch, so we weren't very hungry for dinner tonight. Since it was a little damp and overcast, it was a perfect night for soup. The soup, Indian Spiced Carrot Soup, is from Epicurious.com with minimal veganizing. We replaced the yogurt with Tofutti Sour Cream, and used vegetable broth, of course. Thanks to Christiane for suggesting it the other day. It has a light exotic taste.

And what goes better with homemade soup than homemade bread? So Jane baked the Simply Crusty Bread from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

We cannot recommend this recipe enough. It's simple... four ingredients! And best of all, you make the dough and whatever you don't use goes into the fridge so you can have bread any time you want (within two weeks of making the dough). This bread tasted just as good as the Julia Childs french bread Jane made for the February Daring Bakers Challenge, but it was oh so much easier. (And there was no blood involved!)

If you decide to try the soup, we would suggest cooking the carrots and onions until they're tender before adding the broth. Also, Jane uses an immersion blender (if you don't have one yet, buy one!) instead of trying to transfer the hot soup to a food processor.

Smokey Grilled Tempeh and Cheater Baked Beans. The tempeh and baked beans were okay, but we both decided there was no need to make the tempeh again. The beans were tasty, and worthy of a second try (and very easy to boot).

There's so much positive buzz about this cookbook that we figured we'd do well with one of the more popular recipes. Unfortunately, we're now one for three here. The mac 'n cheese just didn't work for us. Though I thought it was alright, I wouldn't ask Jane to make this again. She actually disliked it, so much so that she said she won't eat the leftovers. To put that in perspective for you, we don't typically throw food away in this house. I didn't have that strong an aversion to the dish, but something didn't work for us, perhaps it was the large quantity of nutritional yeast.

I hate to take such a contrarian stance, but so far this cookbook isn't living up to it's hype, for us at least. Last time we posted about the tempeh, everyone who commented said they loved it. So we're left to wonder if our taste buds are out of sync with the rest of the world, or perhaps Jane's having trouble following recipes lately? So far, we're much happier with Vegan Planet and the Real Food Daily cookbooks.

We're not ready to give up on this book just yet. It's a great big cookbook, and you all seem to love it so much. Next, Jane's going to try the Chickpea Cutlets which the authors state is their signature dish. If we dip below the Mendoza Line (one for six), we'll have to hang up our Veganomicon cleats.

Jane has Veganomicon on loan from our local library. As I mentioned earlier, it is our practice to borrow a book first, when possible, before buying. This way we only wind up buying those books we really want, and don't over-consume.

Anyway, Veganomicon looks to be a pretty good cookbook. Jane tried her hand at the Smokey Grilled Tempeh and Cheater Baked Beans tonight. The beans were really good. The tempeh was interesting, but neither one of us loved it enough for Jane to consider making it again. The cookbook suggests pairing the two with collard greens. We had steamed snap peas instead, one of our favorites.

We're reserving our comments on the cookbook until we've had a little more experience with it... but there is a lot of positive buzz out there. Many of the recipes we've been interested in trying seem to require between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours to prepare though; not the kind of meal Jane likes to prepare during the week.

The next recipes we've earmarked for Jane to try are the Chickpea Cutlets, which the authors tout as one of their best recipes, and the vegan Mac 'n Cheese because we miss that comfort food! We'll keep you posted.