REVIEW by Seanan Forbes
In the common view, the stereotypical vegan is humorless, strait-laced, and proselytizing, and eats food that no self-respecting omnivore would want to touch.
If that image were a balloon, then Natalie Slater would be a bazooka set to blow it out of the sky.
The author of the vegan cookbook, Bake and Destroy, Slater won a Cooking Channel cupcake competition – and it wasn’t for vegans only. Her French toast muffins hip-bumped butter- and egg-filled competitors off the cooling rack, leaving America blinking, judges smiling, and Slater on her a canola-slick, maple-sweet road to fame.
Slater is the main ingredient in the cookbook. When she first got the PDFs, she shared them with her parents and friends. Their reaction: “Reading this book is exactly like talking to you.”
Fortunately, Slater is easy to get along with. Smart, sassy, and colorful (inside and out; Slater sports long stretches of tattoos), the vegan chef has produced a book that is jammed with stories (including an uncle who prioritized peach cobbler over a Yo-Yo Ma performance), opinions (“I still think Pinterest is stupid . . .”), clear directions, tips, tricks, and blessedly user-friendly, exotic-ingredient-free recipes.
Slater’s website bears the same name as her cookbook. It is, she says, “a hybrid of my husband’s interests and my interests.” Her husband works in the skateboard industry. The longest-standing skateboard magazine, Thrasher, has the tagline “skate and destroy.”
Don’t let the title fool you. Bake and Destroy isn’t all about the sweet stuff. This guide will lead you from appetizer to coffee without missing a step.
Slater keeps vegan cooking simple. If you can get your hands on vegan margarine and agave nectar, then you’re ready to hit the kitchen Bake and Destroy style.
The banana bread French toast cupcakes are meltingly tender, with maple-sweetened icing that will have you licking your fingers. Rhonda Shear’s Up All Night Cake is a masterwork of chocolate, caramel, and whipped coconut cream. Slater uses the handle of a wooden spoon to poke holes in the cake, and fills those holes with caramel sauce. Sticking a fork in a slice becomes an adventure in gooey discovery. Cream and chopped chocolate contributing texture as well as flavor.
Reading Slater’s reminiscences – Bike Messenger Brownies have their background in the Chicago’s Earwax Café’s espresso-boosted spicy chai lattes – could entice anybody to toss a diet out the window. The author’s coffee shop history also puts granitas on the page: Arnold Palmer, with tea and lemonade; double soy latte; and organic OJ.
Slater encourages her readers to be creative. Bake and Destroy has advice on pulling an egg substitute out of the pantry, tweaking recipes to make dishes your own, and building an unbeatable dessert or fantasy pizza.
Savory-lovers will appreciate the tofu migas, with beans, tomato, spinach, and either tortillas or smashed tortilla chips. Win meat-loving dinner guests to the healthy side with taco lasagna, which has layers of tortillas, beans, corn, mushrooms, vegan cheese sauce, olives, and avocados. Canned jackfruit is the base of rich pulled “pork”; it’s as satisfying on salad as packed into soft rolls.
For game days, provide miniature pizza cupcakes. Slater uses a pastry-filling tip to fill the cakes with marinara. The cupcakes yield nicely to the tooth, and the filling provides a happily messy surprise.
Bake and Destroy is a solid workaday book. You’ll find plenty of places for Slater’s chee-zee sauce, vegan mayonnaise, ranch dressing, and spiced kale chips.
When it comes to vegan cooking, Slater says, “people assume that it’s a combination of difficult and expensive.” She loves it when people come to her with a tight budget and ask how they can eat healthy, vegan food and not eat the same thing every day.
“My favorite budget go-to dinner is what my husband and I refer to as ‘the bowl of stuff’. You can make it different every day.” For instance? “Switch out quinoa and put in barley.”
As pragmatic as she is honest, Slater likes the “How can I do this realistically” approach – and that’s how she wanted to write the cookbook, using a minimum of unusual ingredients, providing resources, and making things easy for people.
She has succeeded. Whether you’re an experienced vegan; you’re like Slater’s mom, newly vegetarian and far from city stores; a college student living on a worn-out shoestring, or a gourmet trying to figure out how to make veganism suit your taste buds, Bake and Destroy is a book for you.
