I tried Tescos vegan recipes and here's what I thought

After being inspired by Nora Ephron (it is impossible not be) again with her film Julie and Julia in which cooking, or rather, writing about her cooking attempts on a blog, brings a young American women closer to her idol who lived in Paris. It occurred to me I had two out of three parts of this equation for fulfillment; a idol with a strong connection to Paris in the form of the angelic Audrey Hepburn and a blog, all I was missing is the ability to cook or bake...literally anything. How I have made it through three years of cooking for myself at University as a vegan is beyond me...I didn't eat toast for every meal...did I? My lock-down self decided I simply couldn't function if I didn't try and take up baking and write about it like in Ephron's film so I began frantically dominating Google's search engine for easy vegan recipes and when I say easy. I. Mean. Easy.  Of all places I ended up in a Tescos recipe archives rabbit hole and that brings you all up to date. The lists of ingredients were't longer than my arm span or attention span, they didn't list things like flax seed and the method was always just a few steps long in  a very simple format. I had struck lazy  anxious vegan baking beginner heaven. 

I decided I could mentally and financially cope with three recipes so here they are- 

Brownies: 

The first recipe I decided I want to try out was vegan brownies because my favourite all vegan restaurant do the single best brownies I have ever had, vegan or not vegan, their brownies are beyond creamy and luxuriously thick and fudgy, they top every brownie. I knew mine would be nowhere near their standard especially for my first time but man, I was actually very pleasantly surprised by how mine turned out. The method was slightly more complicated than the other two recipes I tried out because of needing to melt the butter and chocolate plus it did make more washing up so if you really hate that/don't have a dish washer or are short on bowls then do keep that in mind. It is also worth noting the recipe calls for walnuts and I didn't include these at the request of my partner but I didn't feel they were lacking much without them although that being said, I will definitely make these again and include the walnuts just to be sure. 

They turned out quite cakey which I personally quite like in a brownie but to be honest, the ingredients did not stick all that well together, I couldn't spot what was acting as an egg substitute in this recipe but if like me you're a fan of the squirrel technique of using your hands to shovel mountains of crumbs into your mouth at a 170 degree angle then this recipe will be great for you. 

The recipe can be found here: https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/vegan-brownies.html 

 Vanilla cupcakes: 

I was particularly looking forward to trying my hand at vegan cakes without fancy exclusively middle class looking ingredients and the vanilla cupcakes were by far the least high maintenance looking. I would make Tesco value Victoria sponge mix semi frequently as a child when I lived with my parents so I really had no experience baking a cake from scratch but after buying a pack of colourful cupcake wrappers my inspiration was reignited and there's no stopping an Ephron fan on a mission. 

Or at least there wasn't until the cupcakes came out rock hard and stuck to the wrappers. 

unfortunately, they weren't all that vanilla tasting or even of any taste at all which i'm still quasi heartbroken over but then again I am a pisces so i'm always heartbroken over something. 

My courage had grown by this stage too as I was concerned the cupcakes would be too plain pre taste test and so added a pinch of flaked almonds to them all as the icing was setting. It is also worth pointing out that the icing quantities did not match the number of cupcakes included in the recipe, they were scarcely covered so I would definitely bear this in mind. 

This attempt was ultimately the biggest failure of entire baking career which is well into its second month of life at this point. 

pretty wrapper and almonds were not enough to save these cupcakes but to be fair, vegan cakes do seem particularly challenging to perfect. 

This recipe can be found here: https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/dairy-and-egg-free-vanilla-cupcakes.html 

 

Banana bread: 

Prior to this baking experience my banana bread my CV consists of a singular thin slice during my second year of University, purchased from a ridiculously overpriced 'student friendly' cafe which had poppy seeds littered throughout. Poppy seeds. Now there's an ingredient I won't be messing around with anytime soon. I was the most apprehensive with this recipe as I didn't know what banana bread would taste like and almost didn't even want to make it I was so anxious of how it would turn out and could not for the life of me comprehend how on earth banana would taste nice baked in a cake like substance. It's mushy and yellow and I don't even like banoffee pie. 

This was hands down the recipe I felt the most confident physically baking by myself, it was very easy for me follow and actually quite therapeutic. 

I literally don't have anything but praise for this recipe, it turned out the best out of all of them and its the only one I have baked multiple times. I actually had a request from someone in my household to continue baking this and it always seems to be eaten pretty quickly. Turns out mashed banana is actually a great ingredient who knew? I mean, probably literally every other person except me lets be real. 

The recipe can be found here: https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/vegan-banana-bread.html