Tag Archive for aquafaba cookbook

Cookbook Update #5: The End is Nigh

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October 1.

It looms on the horizon. I’ve already missed two deadlines, but this is the final, absolute final deadline for the draft of my book, and by hook or by crook, I am going to make it.

The publisher has requested 100-125 recipes from me, and I am, at this moment, around 100. My rough plan is to spend the rest of this week knocking off the last of the recipes from my table of contents (I made a list of them last week, which is now taped to my kitchen cupboard), and then to spend next week going over the draft of the book, adding in all the final touches and formatting it according to their style guide.

Some exciting things happened over this last week. First of all, I got a peek into what the cover of my book will look like.

aquafaba cookbook cover

Now, this is just a working cover, it’s not the final version. This will be used for marketing materials, like the Blad, which is a kind of promotional/marketing piece that we are creating right now. It’ll go out to stores and book sellers in a an attempt to get them interested in ordering my book. It includes 6 recipes. My editor, Meredith and I, have been working on this pretty solidly over the last couple of weeks, and it’s nearly done.

I also learned that book will be available for pre-sales starting next month on Amazon! I mean, c’mon, that’s pretty freaking cool! I’ll let you know the URL when it goes up.

In terms of recipe wins, I haven’t made any massive strides this week, but slow and steady progress. Which I will take! I’ve developed a vegan cheese sauce, which can be eaten alone, or added to pasta to make a creamy mac ‘n’ cheese. I came up with a roasted carrot dip that’s perfect for fall and oh-so-tasty (I may share that one), and a Chocolate Silk Pie. Mmm…

vegan chocolate silk pie aquafaba

I am still struggling almost daily with macarons. When I crack this one, it’s going to be the biggest victory. And I hope I crack it soon… time is running out. The thing about macarons is, I know it can be done. But there are so many factors, every time I make them, I tweak something, but there are so many things to tweak… eventually I have to get it right, right?

I just want to say again how grateful I am to all of you for your outpouring of love and support. It really has kept me going. And we’re almost there!

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Cookbook Update #4

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I fell off the bandwagon.

I was trying to faithfully provide you with weekly updates about how the cookbook was progressing, but then came summer vacation and trip to California, and I got off track.

While we were on our road trip, I did quite a bit of actual updating on the book, writing up all the recipes I’d worked on the week before, getting a chunk accomplished on the “Mains” chapter. Phew.

Then we got home, and this past week, I’ve been focusing almost exclusively on the desserts chapters. There will be a couple; one is dedicated to cookies, cakes, baked desserts. The other is focused on cold desserts, ice cream, mousses, puddings, desserts of that ilk.

failed-macarons

This part of the book, as you can imagine, is the biggest chapter(s) I’ve written so far. Aquafaba really loans itself to desserts, and I had a lot of recipes to knock off my list. Some of them, like the chocolate chip cookie recipe, I nailed on basically the first try. Others, like the brownies and the carrot cake, have taken a few tries to really get right. Still others, like macarons, I am still working on. I’ve made macarons now about 20 times, and every single time has been a failure, some of them spectacularly so.

There was a series of days last week where I made multiple recipes every day, and 2/3 were failures. That was hard. I had to shift and take a break for a while and focus on something a little more winnable for a couple of days.

But I’m getting closer. I’ve made a bit of a breakthrough with some of my desserts that require a stiffer meringue, and that has been due to concentrating the aquafaba by reducing it by half first. This has made a huge difference to the stability and the stiffness of the whipped aquafba. I’m also experimenting with different stabilizers for different kinds of purposes, and that’s been a big breakthrough, as well.

vegan-chocolate-souffle

I’m happy to report I finally nailed a Chocolate Souffle (chocolate souffle without eggs!!), and just today I finally have figured out how to make vegan marshmallows, after many, many tries, and many, many failures.

failed vegan macarons

I estimate that, today, I’ve written about 80 or so out of the 100 recipes I need to create for the book.

The head of marketing also sent me a mock up of my book’s cover the other day–what a trip that was! It makes it feel so real. I can’t wait to hold it in my hands.

So, yeah. Still a lot of struggling. Still plenty of discouraging results. But every time I have a bit of a breakthrough, it propels me on.

It’s happening! I am writing this book, failure is not an option.

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