— Kathy Gold

That is a really big question with a long answer, and I'm going to try to be succinct. So when I'm thinking about a particular recipe that I want to make, I do not go to my cookbooks collection, which is quite vast, to tell you the truth, or to, I don't go online and look for answers either or, you know, variations. I wait until afterwards, I think about what it is that I'm doing. Am I making a cream? Am I looking for a particular cake? Um, or just anything. And then I think about foundational principles for making this particular dessert. And in all of the Rouxbe courses, and certainly in essential vegan desserts, we are looking at foundational principles so that I have a place to start. So I start by writing some things down. I generally, in fact, I always scale the recipe down by a half, maybe even a quarter for the test, for certainly for the first test. And, but you have to, I know that I have to maintain the integrity of the dessert. So if I'm testing a cake recipe, for example, I will scale it down and make some cupcakes of the same size that expect the cake to be so that I have an idea. Now, every, every single ingredient, every change matters. So I, you have to keep really good notes. I have a computer, I have an iPad, I have it all. I have a spreadsheet for scaling recipes up and down. But for me, there's, I am an old school when it comes to writing things down. And so I write things down. I also weigh all my ingredients. I have two electronic scales, digital scales that weigh both in weight, that would be in ounces and grams and milliliters. And I keep notes like that because that's very important. I like to just really create. And so I do that when I'm cooking. It's, it's actually quite hard for me to be so specific, but I don't wanna have to go back and say, oh, that was delicious. What did I do? So I'm very careful about that. If I feel like I've made something that is really good the first time, that doesn't happen very often, but it does happen, then I'm good to go. And I scale it up and I try again. And then I want to see how the recipe will hold. So I might keep a piece on the counter to see how long until it weeps, if it's a pudding or gets stale, if it's a baked good, I put a piece in the refrigerator, I put a piece in the freezer, and that goes for some creams and so on as well. And then more likely, I'm gonna have to make some tweaks. And then the fact is, you really can only change one thing at a time because every single ingredient makes a difference, some more than others. The kind of plant milk you use, the kind of flour that you use, uh, the binding agent and even the spices I am using currently, and probably forever, because as long as they're available, I think they're so fabulous. Burlap and barrel spices. And in fact, the co-founder, Ori Zohar did a live event with us and learned so much about spices. Their spices are much fresher and stronger than the ones you find in the market. So I might use a little less of those spices once I have my recipe set and I'm satisfied, I make it again, I might make it three times. Now I have something to show you because this actually represents a pumpkin pudding that I'm working on. This is two of the actually four tests that I did. Anybody who's in the Philadelphia area or wants to take a trip to Philly, there's a really exciting event happening on November 22nd at the Walnut Hill College. And what it is, is a vegan Thanksgiving that's based on an actual menu from the late 17 hundreds or early 18 hundreds, I don't remember. And several Philly chefs, myself included, are making these recipes. And mine was pumpkin pudding. Now, I used, I did one test using canned pumpkin. I used one test using a kombucha squash, and if you have used kobocha, it's so delicious, but you know that it's dry, it's a dry squash. So I pureed it with some maple syrup, and I did another using a butternut squash. They all came out pretty much the same. I changed the spicing a bit. This one I used extra agar, uh, and it looks, perhaps you can see that it looks firm, but it tastes creamy. So I thought, oh my goodness, I have a new pumpkin chart or pumpkin pie filling that is without tofu. I eat tofu. I've been eating tofu for 30 some odd years. I eat soy, but there are people who are soy avoiders. It doesn't use cashews or another nut to bind the pie, so that's good for the nut allergic. And so from this one recipe, I was able to find a couple different ways to do it. And then the last step in my recipe testing is if it's a book like my cookbook, I send it out to recipe testers. And I have a very long list of questions. Did this work for you? What would you change? Would you make it again? What problems did you have? So that's my process and uh, I hope that that helps. It sounds tedious. It's, it's a bit of work, but it really, it really helps. Of course, I'm at an advantage because I understand the foundational principles of vegan desserts. I came from the traditional side. I was trained traditionally. And then when I decided that I wanted to become a vegan eat plant-based, I had to learn about the differences in our ingredients.