Great to start off the week with a first time guest blogger post about the Bake-Off, hosted in Toronto, by the Toronto Veg Association. This post comes to you from Laura, author of Blue-Eyed Bookworm. Here she is in her own words, “I’m Laura! I’m a vegan living in Toronto with my hubby, our two cats and a grumpy bunny. I blog about anything and everything going on in my life so there’s something for everyone.” Join Blue-Eyed Bookwork on: Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Welcome Laura!
I attended the 5th Annual Totally Fabulous Vegan Bake-Off on Saturday. It was totally fabulous! It was so nice to be in a room filled with people stuffing their faces with delicious vegan goodies.
Forty five bakers, some professional, some not, created roughly 5000 samples for the hungry masses to consume. We judge their baking prowess and then voted for our favourite vegan treat out of the 9 categories.
With my ticket I got to pick 2 plates. I went with the Professionally Crafted Gluten-Free Goodies on the left and Delicious Donuts and Pastries on the right. (Number 25 didn’t show up.)
Look at all of those plates of Professionally Crafted Vegan Classics!
My friend Marissa entered her Break-Up Cookie in the Glorious Gluten-Free Sweets. It’s really yummy!
Loads of prizes from the very generous sponsors, such as Red Path, VegNews, Earth Balance, Natur-a and of course, the Toronto Vegetarian Association.
Marissa was up against these One Drop Macaroons. I didn’t have any but they must have been good since they won the GF category AND Best in Show Non-Professional!
MY favourite of the goodies I got to try was the Chocolate Hazelnut Meringue Tower by Katie Brock, otherwise known as The Saucy Baker. She won for the GF Professional Category. I love that her display says Please Do Not Eat! Apparently last year some people started eating the displays!
The Best in Show Professional was won by Jen Bundock from Apiecalypse Now for her Black Magic Squares. I wish I got to try them! The Best in Show Categories were judged by Ruth Tal, owner of Fresh Restaurants and Lesia Kohut, owner of LPK’s Culinary Groove. Our hosts for the event were Lisa Pitman and Luke Albert.
It was a really great day, other than, of course, the fur trimmed jackets I saw. That was kind of disappointing but it was still a lot of fun. I can’t wait until next year’s bake-off. I’m thinking I might enter. We’ll see!
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Sweet!
Whoa! What a fun (delicious) time!
Wow yummy.
But my question is, how do you make vegan meringue?
I’ve looked up recipes for vegan french macarons, and there’s a lot of work involved with the protein-substitution of eggs in the recipe (since it’s mainly egg whites, i.e. meringue).
I seriously would not have been able to control myself in the room of so many baked goods! Everything looks amazing 🙂
Thanks for the awesome mention, I’m so glad you liked the meringue!! My display was definitely eaten last year before I got a chance to take it home and photograph it (was that naive of me?), so I thought a sign wouldn’t hurt this time around.
Nomstoppable , I’m not sure this meringue recipe would work in macarons, since it probably contains enough xanthan gum to make most baked goods gummy. May be worth a shot though!