Novel Eats

I love it when I see a new Daring Bakers challenge that allows for easy veganizing and gives me a chance to try something truly new. This month’s challenge was all about the phyllo dough – you know, that paper-thin (or thinner than paper-thin) stuff you buy in boxes in the frozen foods aisle at your local grocery store. As with pretty much most challenges, we had to make the dough. The other stuff, the filling, was a piece of cake.

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

As you may know, I’ve made vegan cheesecake a few times. Every time I’ve made cheesecake, however, I have never made my own crust. This month’s Daring Baker’s challenge has given me the motivation and opportunity to make my own crust, which I think turned out great.

A few years ago I worked as a receptionist at a fine stringed instruments dealer. It was a very interesting cultural experience, because we sold extremely expensive violins, violas and cellos to people with a good deal of money. It was, and has been so far, my only true exposure to this slice of the music industry. It was also a very interesting and enjoyable foray into fine chocolates, desserts and other culinary delights. This was prior to my swearing off of cheese, milk and other dairy items, so I’ll confess that I had quite a few non-vegan experiences (and one non-vegetarian one, which I didn’t realize until later – um yeah, imitation crab is still real fish, FYI).

Many of the challenges that we have had so far with The Daring Bakers have seemed to be more complicated both by number of ingredients and the feat pulling it all together. This month’s challenge seemed to focus less on ingredients and more on the method. It’s been a nice change of pace this time around, because I do feel like I have learned something new – although it’s clear I need a bit more practice before I perfect these cookies.

Vegan pizza is pretty easy to make, plus homemade crust beats out store-bought any day!