The truth about vegan desserts

"What does a vegan donut taste like?" someone asked. "Like the hole: Nothing." was the snide response. Another popular retort is "cardboard".

I'd like to open by pointing out that the diatribe you are about to read is not by a vegan. I am vegetarian which permits me egg and dairy without compromising my title. Gelatin, rendered down bits of horse hooves, euthanized pets and dead circus animals, is not vegan nor vegetarian, so boo-hoo, I have to count myself out on marshmallows and jello/jelly. I never liked them anyway. I admit, it stings if gelatin is contained in a tiramisu and I have to pass. Now that you know all that about me, I hope to enlighten those who are ignorant of the potential magic in vegan desserts.

More important than the fact that I can eat eggs or dairy is the fact that I can eat sugar. Sweet, sweet sugar. And cocoa. Oh, I would give your right arm for a fine piece of 60% dark chocolate, preferably from Belgium. I'll eat any chocolate, vegan or not so I am not married to vegan desserts as I write this. It might shock you to know that sugar and cocoa are not only vegetarian but they are also vegan. So is flour! *Gasp* Seriously? Key ingredients of many desserts are not made from animals? Yes, that is correct. No, vegan desserts are not comprised of cucumber and lentils. If you aren't such a snob that you'll eat a Safeway cake or store bought candy, you are no sweet-treat snob, so don't cry about the use of soy milk like you know the difference.

Fried can be vegan, and for that, I am grateful.

When I hear people making cheap cracks at the expense of vegan desserts, it really irritates me because it is just so completely misguided and flat out ignorant. I don't begrudge someone who enjoys a buttery cake, but I was of the understanding that sweetness is what drives the world of dessert, not butter.

Eggs are used as a binding property and so for vegan baked goods, some sort of egg replacer is used. I don't know how all this works because personally, I don't believe in baking. I never have.* I am however willing to reap the benefits of the baking efforts of others and can tell you I have not said myself, nor heard others say of a cupcake "Hmmm, it's okay but it could use more egg." The cakey part of a cupcake can be as moist and delicious as can be, even while vegan. We all know the heart of a cupcake is worn on its sleeve, and by that, I mean it's in the frosting. A frosting consisting mostly of sugar. Nothing is lost here because margarine was substituted for butter, soy milk for milk. Again, I can eat any cupcake, and all I care about is the sugar content.

Choc-orange, one of my all time favourite combos, is contained in this delicious cupcake made by my dear vegan friend, Emily. She was a friend. She became 'dear' after the cupcakes.

Having said all this, there is a group out there who are possibly responsible for the poor showing of the vegan dessert (though honestly, I believe the ignorant naysayers have never tried any of them) and those people are called hippies. While travelling in the middle of nowhere with limited vegetarian options, I admit I will gladly welcome the restaurant offerings of hippies. But as they seem more preoccupied with health and tending to their dreadlocks, it isn't likely to be a foodie's paradise. There are exceptions as the odd hippie will somehow take us to culinary heaven, but generally I have low expectations for what they dish up. Once the main course is completed, one runs the risk of encountering the most tragic words in any dessert cook book and they are "fruit sweetened". No, no, no nononononono! We don't want that. Yes, I agree, a vegan, fruit sweetened chocolate cake tastes like crap. The problem isn't that it is vegan, but that it lacks SUGAR. I urge you not to eat anything fruit sweetened unless you just can't eat sugar, in which case, I'm truly sorry. GOD, I am SO sorry...

A vegan peanut butter bomb cake. I think this is the kind you get in New York which can be found at Moby's tea house, Teany Cafe. This thing blows my mind.

I'm not trying to tell you that all desserts should be vegan or that everything can be perfectly substituted. It just can't, but that's not to say that magic can't and doesn't happen. You are reading the writings of someone who put two spoons of sugar on their cereal, has 5 pumps of flavoured syrup in their mocha, and is known to, on occasion, eat a quality piece of chocolate first thing in the morning (no, I am not a diabetic). I simply do not fuck around when it comes to my sweet treats.

My beloved dark chocolate Bordeaux from See's Candies. Not vegan, but high up in my personal food chain.

My favourite ice-cream is a vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Zig Zag by Purely Decadent. If you look to ice-cream for milky creaminess, then maybe vegan ice-cream isn't for you, though it is still creamy. I actually wont eat chocolate ice creams that are cut with too much milk like those at Stone Cold Ice Creamery (plus it stinks in there). But if you enjoy rich chocolate flavour and with the added bonus of peanut butter, then you are a bloody idiot to turn this thing down. I can and do eat any ice cream I want, but this is my favourite.

Really? Do I need to explain this?

Another favourite dessert of mine is from a vegan restaurant in the San Fernando Valley called Madeleine Bistro. This is a place for fine dining, small portions, and explosive flavours, but the thing I wait for and long for is the Bananas Foster Split. I first encountered Bananas Foster while doing extra work on the Tenacious D movie. I guess it's some sort of magical concoction of slices up bananas sauteed with brown sugar and likely butter. It was magical and I longed for it, but never ended up having it again until Madeleine's. There's a twist on the traditional Foster as they lay out the warmed, sugared banana, but add a drizzled raspberry sauce (raspberry sauce!) and top it off with vegan ice cream, hot chocolate sauce and on top of that a vegan cream made of cashews (with lots of sugar). How can anything made of cashews and sugar not be fantastic? As I said, the restaurant is fancy and I just about have to have my hands cuffed to the back of the chair to stop me from bringing my plate up to my face to lick it clean. I do quietly continue scraping every bit of sauce from the plate with my spoon until the waitress comes to take it away from me.

Oh sweet Bananas Foster Split, it has been too long! We will be together again soon...

A blog about vegan desserts can't be complete without honouring the beloved cake maker of Melbourne. Vegetarian Orgasm was a much loved vegetarian restaurant in Melbourne. While the food was of a pretty high standard (until they expanded, and cut portions and raised prices and went out of business) the desserts were completely out of this world. They were the work of a man we all considered an artist in the realm of cake making. While not vegan himself (just vegetarian), Mark the cake maker appeared to spend most of his spare time dreaming up new cakes. His father, like mine (both were Sri Lankan) was a sugar junkie and this had rubbed off on him. He would not cut any corners when it came to appeasing a sweet tooth. Among his classics were the peanut butter bomb cake, Turkish delight cake and honeycomb cake. He even made a Coca-cola cake, complete with little pieces of chocolate he'd made from a chocolate mold of Coke bottles. The main body of the mega cakes were a good 3 inches in height, but atop that would be some kind of flourish, enhancing the already intense flavours (pieces of Turkish delight if it were a Turkish delight cake, etc) then topped off with lots of cream and drizzles of hardened chocolate. I'm tearing up just thinking about it.

There were regulars on the dessert menu, but he was consistently coming up with new stuff. We would often stop by just to get cake. So loved by all were his cakes whether one was vegan, vegetarian or carnivore, that we didn't have to think twice about employing his mastery to make our wedding cake. He did one of his fabulously dense mousse cakes, one layer was just chocolate, another chocolate hazelnut. I forget what the third one was, but it was so rich and divine that just a sliver could send you into a diabetic coma. I for one was never able to eat a whole slice in once sitting, despite all my boasting of sugar consumption. I wont lie, the vegan cake did not have the strength of whatever feats are used for regular wedding cake architecture for a three tiered cake. It sunk a little, but he warned us this might happen. No help that the cake required an hour and a half car ride, but aside from a little sinking, it looked just fine and more importantly tasted fabulous, the two chocolate echidnas he made stood proudly atop. It was so great that the staff at the reception place we caught trying to hide the remainder from us to keep for themselves.

Not one of Mark the cake maker's mousse cakes, but kinda similar on the inside. His were darker though and I'm guessing even more delicious.

Good vegan dessert makers should not be scoffed at. They are not making something that visually resembles a dessert, but trying to tantalise taste buds while adapting to certain dietary needs. They are to be championed for their innovation and dedication to the glorious world of desserts!

So be a lover, not a fighter of vegan desserts. If you love sugar, fruit flavours and/or chocolate, these decadent needs can be fulfilled without animals products. No need to bag it out, because it just ain't true. Besides, you sound like an asshole.



*Remark about not believing in baking was stolen from Andrew Dice Clay.

Pedantic preferences

It has become clear, as you might know too from reading this blog, that I am easily worked up, both positively and negatively about a whole host of different things. Usually, I'll provide a lot of back story and a connection to the bigger picture as reasoning for my strong beliefs about mundane matters while other times what I say may seem pointless. Despite that initial impression, I still feel there is a purpose behind my preferences. Something like my hatred of a chewed up straw when I am sharing a beverage, I believe is a preference easily understood and shared. Taking in a straw chewed on by someone else, even if this person is your life partner, is nothing short of disgusting, something which I liken to putting pre-masticated food into ones mouth. Ugh. My esophagus shuddered just thinking about it. The preferences I discuss here are even more insignificant than that, yet I still believe there is good reasoning.

On the lower end of the scale, I get very angry when someone opens a package of potato chips from the bottom of the bag. What is with this? To me, it's like wearing a dress backwards or driving a car only in reverse. Everything was laid out to be done a certain way and then *boom*, the universe gets turned on its head as someone disregards the balance because they can't take a moment to turn a bag of chips around. What if I want to read the ingredients? What if there is a competition I want to enter? How am I supposed to read all the entry requirements carried on this topsy-turvy chip bag? Simply put, I am screwed. I risk either injury to my neck as I try to contort my aging body to meet with this flipped around bag, or I risk chip remnants in my lap. Either way, this could all be avoided if the bag were simply opened from the top. Stomach filled, taste buds tantalised and reading material easy to read from this simple and obvious process being carried out.

I actually couldn't find a picture of a bag of chips opened at the bottom because apparently there aren't enough sick people in this world doing that, I'm happy to report.

Recently a mishap occurred during the opening of a bag of tortillas, not because of this carelessness of a lay person, but courtesy of the tortilla manufacturers themselves! As I snipped the top off the bag to gain access to the tortillas contained within, I soon expressed disdain for the bag as I attempted to seal the remainder with Glad Wrap which failed to provide air-tight freshness I had hoped for. Upon poor completion of this task, and after wishing the bag came with a built in ziplock function, low and behold I discovered the bag DID contain such a function, however, given that it was placed at the bottom of the bag, it slipped under my radar of bag opening sensibilities, so the intended convenience fell flat. Granted, this was a huge oversight on my part, but I think the package designers at Mission were out to lunch (and that lunch was not making their own tacos) the day they came up with this.

Illogically placed ziplock device.

Another beef I have is with wrongful toothpaste squeezing. While I feel strongly about this matter, if someone has stressed an opposing preference, then I will respect their method when using their tube. However if no such conversation has transpired and I find your tube to be haphazardly squeezed from the middle, then yes, I will take matters into my own hands and squeeze it all up from the base. The squeezing of the toothpaste tube in this manner speaks volumes about the state of our society. People are too blasé about doing what feels good in the here and now and not taking stock and thinking about the future. The fact remains that you can successfully squeeze from the middle for weeks, but the day will come when this slovenly method fails to come through and so a last minute scramble to inch up all the poor paste that was left behind at various points throughout the tube takes place. Depending on the make up of the tube, this can prove quite difficult with some of the paste that hard earned money was spent on, is sentenced never to emerge from the nozzle as nature intended, but instead to be left behind, off to spend eternity in a landfill. A far cry from the promised land: the ocean. I think about all this intensely, twice daily as I paste up my brush, and it is for this reason I always squeeze from the bottom.

Beautiful.

Dear God, make it stop!

Lastly, and possibly the most controversial, is the preference of the toilet roll. I can't say I have felt strongly about this issue my whole life, but certainly for the last 10 years or so, perhaps after being confronted with a deep set roll dispenser, this preference of mine came into fruition. It is now so clear to me that if I find someone has their roll hanging the wrong way, I go ahead an change it, assuming that only indifference to its placement can be the cause. I can only imagine that the indifferent toilet roll installer has been fortunate enough to encounter only accommodating roll holders. I am a strong believer in the paper hanging over the top. I find this makes the end easiest for accessibility, the other way having a tendency to get lost.

It is a requirement in California (or so I am told) that restrooms have seat liners. This is not a requirement in all states, and there's pretty much no such thing in Australia, where I was toilet trained. Still, germs are germs in all corners of the globe and measures must be taken to prevent contact with them. I was taught to line the seat with paper, something I still do in public restrooms as I just cant get the hang of the provided seat liners. As such, I haven't time to dilly dally and let the end of the paper make it arrival in due course. I need that end NOW, lest the ladies in neighbouring stalls pine to see the tap dancing performance going on through the wall. Perhaps this is how my preference for "over" came to surface.

Here are some examples of why "over" is correct and "under" is wrong.

This is the classic example of a troublesome toilet roll holder, the kind I find at work and battle regularly. If the roll hangs forwards, it is easy to roll it forward and find it. If it hangs backward, it is easy for it to get lost in the cavern and in the case of the device at work, the edge gets caught to the ridge at the bottom putting unnecessary strain on the bladder as one works tirelessly to fish it out. It is particularly hard to find the end when the roll is full, making a reach in for it near impossible.

Fun times getting the end of this should the roll hang the other way!

The print on this roll shows it was intended to hang the other, correct way.

A recipe for success!

When taking a sewing class last year, I asked the instructor which way the spool of thread should be placed on my machine. "How do you hang your toilet paper?" she asked. "Over?" I said, confident in my own toilet paper hanging practices, but wary of hers. "Exactly!" was her response, filling my heart with joy to see that some people live in a world where they are not confronted with this matter as though there isn't any other way.