There are so many wonderful vegan cookbooks available today. Why is it then, I still enjoy taking recipes and making them vegan? It’s something I had to do three decades ago when I went vegan because there were very few vegan cookbooks. Now I just enjoy it. I recently reviewed the book The New Heirloom Garden by Ellen Ecker Ogden for an upcoming podcast. I thought it was a book on gardening and didn’t realize it had many recipes. I also didn’t realize that the recipes weren’t vegan. As I thumbed through the beautiful photos I thought to myself how I would veganize every recipe. So far I have made two, the Caramelized Leek Tart and the Buckwheat Crêpes with Spicy Applesauce.
 
For the tart here are my swaps:
Medjool dates for brown sugar
Almond ricotta for dairy ricotta cheese
Cashew yogurt for dairy yogurt
Oats, millet and garbanzo bean flour to replace wheat flours
 
It came out beautiful. I may use this crust recipe for all my pies!

 
For the Buckwheat crêpes, I opted for my own Buckwheat Crêpe recipe which I love. It uses raw buckwheat groats and water and is perfect every time. The recipe in the The New Heirloom Garden uses buckwheat flour, wheat and white flours, eggs, dairy milk and butter. I also used my own Applesauce recipe which does not have sugar in it, but I added the spices in the book’s recipe to make the Spicy Apple Sauce. Since I had some Almond Ricotta left over from making the tart I topped my crêpes with it. THIS IS SO GOOD!