Vegn Mofo Day 12 - Tell Us About Your Favourite Cookbook!

I'm already loving what I've read of other people's posts for today. It's great to see what books and authors we have in common and to discover ones that are new to me. I've broken my post down a bit into favourite books for different type of vegan cooking. Let's start with baking.

I wanted to include the Scoffer booklets partly as a shout out to the wonderful world of zines and DIY publishing and partly just because they are a great introduction to the world of vegan baking. They were written by Ronny who lives in my home town of Glossop and sold to raise funds for Animal Causes. Sadly The Cake Scoffer is now out of print but Return of The Cake Scoffer is still available and for the mere price of £1.50 you can get your hands on recipes such as Bakewell Slice, Chocolate Fudge Cake, Berry and Ginger Cheesecake and Chocolate Eclairs. If you ever come across a copy of the Cake Scoffer grab it as it contains the most amazing recipe for a four ingredient cheesecake including a whole tub of Swedish Glace ice cream!

Another book I want to mention in the baking category is Babycakes. After visiting the bakery in New York and loving their baked goods I knew I had to get my hands on their cookery book when it came out. It's been invaluable to me as I always try to bake something gluten free to take to Cake Liberation Front as we have several GF regulars. My favoured recipes are Raspberry Scones, Lemon Poppy Teacake and Gingersnaps. It also has my favourite Banana Bread recipe ever within it's pages.

In the everyday eating category I have to of course include Carol Vorderman (my unofficial Mofo theme). Out of all the Detox books this one is my favourite and the most used. You'll be seeing quite a few pictures of things from this in the coming days.

Get It Ripe is by Canadian Jae Steele and her blog Domestic Affair was one of the first vegan blogs I got into. I must admit that I didn't cook much from this until my sister borrowed it and raved about it. She was about to undergo a course of IVF and was eating lots of detox type meals and borrowed some of my vegan books. Jae is a holistist nutritionist and midwife and there's lots of good guidance type info in the book as well as recipes. My favourite recipes that I make again and again are Cilantro Black Bean Dip, Barbecue Baked Tofu with Mushroom and Bell Peppers, Sesame Kale Soba and Carob Chai Cake. Oh and the IVF? The twins started school last week :)

This next book comes into the category of  'trying to show non-vegan friends that we don't miss out!' Vegan Diner by Julie Hassan came out a couple of years ago and has been very well used in my house. Favourites include Smoky Curls, Barbequed Ribz, Smoky Seitan Roast, Great Smoky Mountain Cheeze, Ooey-Gooey Brownies and Almond Raspberry Cake (one of my favourite cakes ever!)

There was only ever going to be one winner for me though. A book that combines all of the above categories - great baked goods, tasty everyday eats and recipes fit to grace dinner parties. This book was the game changer for me. I'd drifted towards a plant based diet over a couple of years because of making tweeks to my diet to help address some hormone related issues. I'd come across the Post Punk Kitchen website and printed off recipes from there and also Vegweb. There'd been recipes from elsewhere too (I was still eating fish and chicken) but it was the vegan recipes that I kept coming back to. Vegan With A Vengeance excited me and I dived into it.  I still cook from it regularly even though I love lots of Isa's other books too. Flicking through it for this blog post I noticed that even though I've used it loads I've maybe only made about 60% of the recipes. My personal favourites are Scrambled Tofu, Carrot Bisque, Mocha Chip Muffins, Mango Summer Rolls, Fettuccine Alfreda, Brooklyn Pad Thai, Moroccan Tagine, Raspberry Blackout Cake and Gingerbread Apple Pie.

I'd love to know what your favourite recipes are from Vegan With A Vengeance as I feel there is much more good stuff still left for me to explore! So, please, recommend away. You can see from the picture how well used my copy is, it is literally held together with cellotape. I hadn't realised that the 10th Anniversary Edition had come out but I think I will treat myself to a copy. However, the original will always still sit proudly on my cookery bookcase.