Free Inquiry: Change of Plan & Vegan Twix Bars

As I mentioned last week, I have decided to alter my plan for my inquiry project slightly. Originally, I was planning on just doing vegan baking from the “Oh She Glows” cookbook, with my recipes progressively getting more difficult. Throughout this process though, I found that I didn’t feel that challenged by many of the recipes. To really make sure that I was getting the learning out of this project that I had hoped for, I decided that for the remainder of my recipes I wouldn’t be tied to sourcing them from one particular book/website, but rather I will find recipes from various sources that seem interesting, fun, and somewhat challenging to me!

For this week’s recipe, I decided to make Vegan Twix bars! I got the recipe from Half Baked Harvest which has become one of my FAVOURITE food accounts to follow on Instagram! All of her recipes aren’t vegan, but she definitely has some that are! This one stood out to me because of the creamy caramel filling. Caramel was something I hadn’t undertaken before in baking, and let alone vegan baking, and so I thought it would be a fun endeavour.

This recipe was really easy to follow and tastes incredibly delicious. The one thing I would say to be cautious of is making sure not to burn the caramel filling – so, just keep a close eye on it! Also, I made one slight deviation from the recipe in terms of the flour. The recipe calls for almond flour, but I used all purpose. I had great intentions to use almond flour until I went to the grocery store and saw that the small bag of it would cost me $18…I promptly put that bag back on the shelf and decided regular flour would do! This seemed to make no difference to the recipe as it turned out perfectly, but the one thing to note is that by not using almond flour the recipe was no longer gluten free which is something to be mindful of. In doing more vegan baking, I realize almond flour is a product often suggested but it definitely isn’t a budget friendly option. I would say that if you aren’t gluten free, you generally don’t need to worry about using almond flour unless you really want to.

I found a great blog post about easy swap outs in baking/cooking, including many vegan alternatives for regular non-vegan baking ingredients! She specifically states that almond flour and all purpose are 1:1 and so there is no worry in needing to alter a recipe to accommodate this switch.

If anyone has any great vegan baking recipes that may be slightly more challenging, I would love to hear!

Bye for now, Jaime