Vegan Dessert Basics

Vegan pastry has found its own routes, and they lead to results that often surpass the traditional ones. Aquafaba whips like egg white, and sometimes better. Cocoa butter crystallises with a precision that butter can only chase.This first volume is the book of foundations: it gathers the reasons why the recipes work. Six chapters go through the raw materials that take the place of egg, butter and cream — aquafaba and plant proteins, fats and their melting points, sugars and sweeteners, plant drinks and creams, thickeners and gelling agents, powdered egg-white substitutes — and for each one they explain the technical behaviour: at what temperature it behaves how, how long it holds, when it gives way.Those who start here will understand the volumes that follow. Those who start elsewhere will come back to this one the day they want to know why a preparation behaved the way it did.