I was a huge fan of Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen. I subscribed to the magazine, had many of their cookbooks, and recorded their PBS show on my TiVo. When we went vegan, that became more difficult. While they had a fair number of vegetarian recipes, they had no vegan ones. They seemed to have a disdain for healthy eating and vegetarians in general. I cancelled my subscription and gave away most of my books. When I called to cancel my subscription, they asked why. I told them I had was now vegan and they didn’t have anything for me. They apologized and understood.

Color me surprised recently when I was researching how to use aquafaba and came across an article by America’s Test Kitchen. I was even more surprised to find that they had a whole cookbook, Vegan for Everybody, devoted to vegan cooking. Intrigued, I bought the Kindle version. It was less expensive than the paper copy and I often move my recipes to the Paprika Recipe Manager App.

I was pleasantly surprised at how vegan positive it was. My first recipe to try was one for Vegan Brownies. We were going dinner at a friend’s house and I was bringing dessert. I had most of the ingredients in the house, so it seemed like a good place to start. I’ve made vegan brownies before and they were good, but I have to admit, these were amazing.

I made a few substitutions and forgot one ingredient, but they were still incredible. My husband is not a huge fan of brownies, but he loved these. The recipe calls for unsweetened chocolate, but I only had dark chocolate. I used that and cut back on the sugar. I also forgot the espresso powder, but they were still good. I didn’t have enough all-purpose flour so I used part freshly milled whole-wheat flour. I don’t use much white flour anymore, so I’ll try all whole-wheat next time and see if they still work out well. The recipe was pretty forgiving. I didn’t have a 13 x 9 inch pan and used a 9 x 9 cake pan instead. That made them taller, which I thought worked well.

They have the vegan brownie recipe online if you want to try it out before buying the book. Although, I’d recommend buying the book. A lesson learned after the fact, if you buy the paperback version from Amazon, they give you the Kindle version. Wish I had known that before buying the Kindle version. Oh, well, lesson learned.