I enjoy vegan cooking, but have always been skeptical about vegan baking, but this book may make a convert out of me yet. I have made a handful of recipes and enjoyed them more than I expected.

I am always looking for vegan recipes that will impress my family and friends, and this book full of cookies, bars, pies, and tarts is perfect. Also, the tips on storage and common allergen information were very helpful.

Finally! I've eaten a mostly vegan diet for decades and am constantly changing recipes to use whole food ingredients when baking. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I love that this cookbook focuses on using whole grain flours and minimally processed ingredients. What a refreshing change!

Since beginning my journey to whole food plant based eating which continues, I have perused many vegan and vegetarian cookbooks. While I've found a wide array I have not found many that are only focused on baked goods. I have found baked goods to be a challenge mainly because of the required substitutions especially around eggs. This book might end up being exactly what I need. There are so many yummy sounding recipes... Chocolate Chip Scones, Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake... are you sensing a theme here? Beside the chocolate chip milieu, there are things such as Sweet Potato Brownies, Lemon-Poppy Seed Cake and almost everything in the Pie chapter. My pet peeve with cookbooks is lack of photos and I'm afraid that is the case here but the photos there are are high quality. Can't wait to try these recipes!

This is the ideal vegan baking cookbook for someone like me. The standard substitution item is to use bananas in vegan baking instead of the eggs and oil but I cannot eat bananas. I still look at all of these other recipes hoping that they indicate another substitute but they don't. The Whole Food Vegan Baking cookbook is almost entirely baking using other substitutes besides banana (except for when the recipe is a banana based recipe). A lot of recipes use applesauce, which I have used in chocolate muffins before so I am excited to try it in these new recipes. I want to make almost every single item in this book. My instagram might be taken over by various photos of baked goods.

I'll start by saying that I really liked this book. It's important to me that cookbooks have common ingredients and that the instructions are easy to follow. This book satisfied both of those categories. I also appreciated the amount of gluten-free recipes in this book. There are also variation tips under each recipe. Thanks to the publisher for the advance review copy.

I selected "Whole Food Vegan Baking" to review because I am currently writing articles about longevity and healthspan to support the launch of a company's supplement. The reports I've written discuss a variety of diets. I have enjoyed writing about these diets because my undergraduate degree is in Food Science. I have been fascinated with Food Engineering lately, and it's because people are transforming unhealthy foods to healthy foods, such as plant-based burgers.
I've read the recipes in the book and mentally compared them with the diets that I've researched. I looked for key superfoods. I love how some of the recipes incorporate flaxseeds and walnuts, which are excellent sources of omega-3 fatty acids. I appreciate the use of blueberries, an antioxidant "powerhouse," in some of the recipes as well.
The first recipe I tried was the chocolate scones. The limited ingredients had me wonder how hard the scones would be, but it was a pleasant surprise to discover how moist these were even after putting them in the refrigerator. They were delicious, and I didn't feel guilty about eating them. My grandmother kept referring to the scones as "cakes."
As soon as I made them, I went right back to the store to make sure I had enough ingredients to make another batch. The next day, I went to the store again to purchase ingredients for the other recipes.
The Dad's Decadent Chocolate Cake was a bit different. If you choose to make it, you will need a high-grade blender to achieve a nice smooth consistency. I used an immersion blender. While it helped, it didn't get the batter as smooth as it needed to be. The cake's texture was moist but slightly chewy because of the oats. Also, the potato used for the "icing" would be better pureed. I mashed the potato, but I still had little chunks that showed up in the "icing." I wasn't really a fan of the "icing." However, the cake was good, but the batter needed to be smoother. The Easy as Pie Apple Bread was also another one that had a bit of chewy consistency, but it's a perfect sweet treat for breakfast. I would recommend purchasing diced apples.
Another favorite in our house was the 10-minute biscuits. I made two batches, and they disappeared in 10-minutes. My husband enjoyed them with honey while I loved eating them with "I can't believe it's not butter."
The recipe book has some delicious recipes that you will want to have as staples in your household. The biscuits and the scones are the winners in our house. However, you will enjoy how easy and quick it is to make the recipes. They don't require too many ingredients. So, the foods are definitely worth a try.