“I love a good butter question,” laughs Katie Robinson, the owner of Botanical Bakeshop in Milan.
Robinson and her staff at Botanical Bakeshop seem to have accomplished the insurmountable task of crafting baked goods without the use of any animal products whatsoever. That is, they’re a vegan bakeshop. No eggs, no milk and no animal-based butter. Everything that comes from Botanical Bakeshop is 100% plant based.
Truly, you wouldn’t know it. This author had the opportunity to sample several of the desserts that are so expertly crafted by Robinson, from the Oatmeal Cream Pies to the Pistachio Raspberry cake, to Pain au chocolot, there wasn’t a single item that I tried and missed a more traditional version.
What was perhaps the most remarkable was the presentation of things like the Pain au chocolot, which is essentially a chocolate croissant. The laminated dough was absolute cosmetic perfection and with butter being a key ingredient in croissants, this, of course, brings us to our aforementioned question about butter.
“For croissants, the laminated dough is a whole nother beast,” Robinson warned. “Most of the time, you can just buy your basic, Kroger brand butter. That is fine. That will work for everything. Laminated does require a different, firmer butter.”
When it comes to vegan baking, however, not all butters are created equal.
“Every vegan butter is different,” Robinson said. “Depending what I am making, that will determine what I’m using. Some butters have better flavor, some have less water, so they have a better structure. Some have nuts, like Miyoko’s butter.”
“My favorite is Violife. It’s nice because it’s soy free, so it avoids some allergies. It’s a nice firm butter. Flavor wise, my favorite is the Country Crock sticks, like the olive oil sticks. I love those. I think they have a really good butter flavor. If I’m making a butter cream, I like to use the Country Crock. If I’m making a croissant, I like to use the Violife.”
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Besides butter, there is another key animal-based ingredient in baking: eggs. They’re so unique and versatile that omitting them from a batch of cookies, for example, might as well be a recipe for disaster. In order to go Robinson eggless, she had to examine exactly why they’re used in so many desserts.
“The most general usage of eggs is binding, keeping things together,” said Robinson. “Otherwise, like if you’re talking about egg whites, that’s adding volume, and yolks add a lot of flavor.”
For Robinson, it’s the flavor that is key when considering whether or not to use a substitute in her baking.
“Ten years ago, the biggest egg replacer that everyone used was banana. Everything was banana based. That’s a great binder, but I try to avoid substitutes only because, a lot of times you just don’t need them.”
For Robinson, this revelation came, in part, from her great grandmother’s book of recipes.
“I found my great grandmother’s old recipes from the 1920’s, and a lot of that was when eggs weren’t readily available and animal products were really expensive,” Robinson explained. “It wasn’t stuff like she had on hand. A lot of these really old cake recipes often don’t have eggs. They would use fat – and it was usually animal fat – but eggs and milk were expensive and hard to come by, so all of her old dessert recipes were eggless ones.”
And when the recipe calls for an animal fat?
“Then I just use a butter. Because really, baking at its core is fat. Whether that’s animal fat, oil, or butter it will change. It will change a cookie, whether the butter is melted, or if you use oil versus butter. But when it comes down to it, it’s just what fat you are going to use and learning how it works in your recipe.”
Follow Botanical Bakeshop on Instagram and Facebook to keep up on Robinson’s ever changing menu. Can’t decide what to order? Pick up one of the monthly Pastry Boxes and use the discount code CURRENT10 for 10% off your order.
