Setting up your kitchen for dessert-making success involves considering several factors, including the balance between essential tools and nice-to-have items, along with implementing efficient organizational strategies. After the holidays is a good time to reassess our kitchens.
Join Chef Fran Costigan, Rouxbe Director of Vegan Pastry, in her home/test kitchen for an engaging and essential event designed for everyone wanting to create a more efficient, functional, sustainable and visually appealing space. In this interactive session, Chef Fran will explore best practices for creating your optimal kitchen setup, drawing on her extensive experience in restaurant kitchens and her recent home kitchen renovation.
Emphasizing the importance of thinking outside the often-outmoded kitchen rulebook, she invites you to consider, for example, whether your pantry or baking pans must be confined to the kitchen or moved elsewhere.
Is it possible to establish a dedicated pastry kitchen within a kitchen used for also for savory meals (e.g., family, or personal meals)? Chef Fran will delve into the practicalities of setting up a functional kitchen that aligns with a reasonable budget, offering insights gained from her recent kitchen renovation. Get ready to plan and implement with efficiency and joy, leaving frustrations behind.
About Fran Costigan
Fran Costigan is internationally renowned as the authority on vegan desserts. Trained at the New York Restaurant School and Natural Gourmet Institute, Fran was a chef in both traditional and vegan pastry kitchens before moving into teaching over 20 years ago. A lifelong chocoholic and long time vegan, Fran’s latest book, Vegan Chocolate: Unapologetically Luscious and Decadent Dairy Free Desserts, (Running Press 2013) is for all who madly, deeply love chocolate desserts, whether or not dietary considerations are an issue.
Her previous cookbook, More Great Good Dairy-Free Desserts Naturally (Book Publishing Company 2006) is the basis of the Costigan Vegan Baking Boot Camp Intensive®.
For more information, www.francostigan.com.
Tuesday, January 16th
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Related Video FAQs:
- What suggestions do you have for substituting egg whites in a recipe?
- Why would I want to roast my cauliflower/broccoli, et’al veggies without silicone or parchment and place them directly on the pan instead?
- I would like to know if you are recommending fruit paste to substitute for sugar?
- Any tips on baking in a oven that is supplied by propane or gas?
- What it "Like with Like"?
- Is it better to decant dry ingredients or is it better to leave in the original packaging?
- What can be added to baked desserts such as cookies to make them crispy or to have similar texture and taste with cookies or desserts made with dairy products?
- What is the best way to clean silicone bakeware?
- I’ve had an oven for the last three years that includes a proofing reservoir that needs to be filled with water. Do I need to be using this feature when baking?
- Other than zucchini, pumpkin, carrot and apple, what other vegetables and fruit can be used to bake cakes, muffins and brownies?
- Do you have any tips for optimizing refrigerator/freezer space, particularly with an eye toward the many chilling steps involved in making pastries?
- Have you baked desserts using fresh herbs such as basil? Is this an upcoming trend in the dessert world?
- Are there some sweets that do better with freezing? I can’t leave an entire pan of brownies on the counter because my husband and I tend to eat them!
- What are some pantry must have's for baking success?
- I am considering going from a knife drawer to the wall mount. Are there significant tips/advantages I ought to be aware of?
- Where can I find cake or brownie recipes that don’t use nut butters or tahini?
- What is a good alternative for coconut milk/oil?
- I've got a great chocolate cake recipe...but it has a lot of butter in it and eats kind of dry. What would you suggest I substitute?
- Would love to know what the best Soy replacement is?
- How do we make whole food plant-based pastry without oil and without vegan butter?
- When I dry my cookie sheets and cake pans, it turns my dish towel grey / black. What does that mean and what kind of pan should I buy so this won't happen?
- I would love to know how to substitute for oil in dessert recipes that have it?
- My kitchen is basically an alcove with a smaller than full-size oven (where I store some pots) and refrigerator and counter-space means a cutting board over the sink. What could a successful setup be?
- If you are limited on funds, what would be the first things you would suggest we get to start our home bakery?
- Can you explain your idea of "Mise en place your life"?
- What are your top 3 must-haves for vegan baking success?
- When baking oil-free, which do you think is best, safe and most reliable for getting good results: parchment or silicone?
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