Knowledge Base > Fran Costigan - Exploring Ingredient Substitutions

Exploring Ingredient Substitutions

Fran Costigan - Exploring Ingredient Substitutions

This event was on Tuesday, December 17, 2024 at 1:00 pm Pacific, 4:00 pm Eastern

One of the most frequent questions we get at Rouxbe is “what can I swap for X ingredient?” For example, How do arrowroot, corn, and tapioca compare? Are all these starches are a 1:1 … Read More.

Recorded

Question:

If I have a non-WFPB recipe comfort food from childhood, what is the best way to convert it to WFPB so that it tastes pretty similar? It's a banana cream pie.

— Tiffiny Mitchell

Answer:

Well, you know, again, that's kind of tricky because my understanding of whole food plant-based, and I do understand it, I've been doing this for a very, I am not, I consider myself a Whole Foods person. Um, but I do use oil limited amounts of oil. I made, as some of you know, I made rip esselstyn's wedding cakes and they were the cake. It was basically this cake without any added oil. So that also goes to say that sometimes everybody needs a dessert, even the essel stints. And Dr. Essel Ston was 91 this week, so we all wish him a happy birthday. Um, anyway, it's not going to be, you're gonna, you're, if you're doing a whole food plant-based no oil version of your banana cream pie, you're gonna have to do a lot of subbing. And I would cut a recipe in half or in a quarter and do some playing around banana cream pie. You could do tofu and a nice, um, very ripe banana or maybe cashew cream, a really thick cashew cream and some banana. And then do a crust that isn't a rolled out crust because I haven't ever made one without oil that I would recommend to anybody. So do a pressed cookie crust that could work or a date crust and just see how it tastes. It's not gonna taste exactly the same, that's for sure. But you can definitely work on it. Good luck. We all like our comfort food recipes from childhood. I mean, mine was chocolate pudding.
Fran Costigan

Fran Costigan

Director of Vegan Pastry

FranCostigan.com