Sunday’s conversion class was both fun and educational!  We took one recipe for a baked good in its conventional form (using white sugar, white flour etc.) and changed one ingredient each time until the finished product was vegan and more health supportive . . . oh and tasted good too!

The Teams 

Jessica & Melanie – Brownies

Lois &  Christine  – Peanut Butter Cookies

Samantha & David – Black & White Cookies

Amy & Ali – Carrot Cake

Denise & Val – Chocolate Chip Cookies

Led by . . .

Chef “flax eye” Elliott

Here’s how we cumulatively changed the conventional chocolate chip cookie to be vegan and have more health supportive ingredients . . .

1.) Make as is recipe.

2.) Change the flour – Whole Wheat Pastry Flour

3.) Change additives – Sunspire Chips

4.) Change sweetner – Coconut or Palm Sugar

5.) Change butter – Slightly solidified Coconut oil

6.) Change egg – Flax egg

Sounds easy, but in reality we were tweaking the recipe every time we made it right down to the tablespoon of flour. Each batch came out so different so we had to keep what worked and changed what didn’t without compromising flavor or texture.

It was an excellent exercise and really opened my eyes to the process of how to change a recipe to be more health supportive.

You could imagine how many baked goods were flying around after making the same recipe 6-8 times!  I can honestly say that I didn’t eat a full cookie but since Denise couldn’t taste any until the very end because she is vegan, I had to make sure everything was ok

Luckily, Chef Elliott made a pot of his famous miso soup to alkalize us from all the sugar.

Yum!

We still have much more baking to do in the future, so we could use about 10 more gallons of it!

Have you ever tried making a baked good (sweet or savory) to be more healthy?  How’d it go?