Cookbook Review!

This cookbook review is of Great Good Desserts Naturally by Fran Costigan. I really like this book, but there is one thing about it that throws me off. What I'm talking about is the fact that while the recipes are free from refined sugar, most recipes replace the refined sugar with a ton of maple syrup. Maple syrup is quite expensive, so that might scare some people off. For Easter this year, I made the recipe for The Versatile Vanilla Cake found on pg. 70, using an egg shaped muffin-type tin, and it was actually too sweet for me. I learned my lesson, and I've been cutting back slightly on the amount of sweeteners used in Fran's recipes. Besides the maple syrup thing, I have no complaints, it's all been delicious. So far, I've made:
*The Very Versatile Vanilla Cake
*Boston Creme Pie
* Ultimate Chocolate Sauce (for the Boston Creme Pie. We ate a few spoonfuls and still had plenty to frost the pie, it's so freaking good)
* Blueberry Slump (this a good summer dessert because it cooks on the stove)
*Good Gourmet Gorp (Susan loves this! In case no one know, the gorp stand for good old raisins and peanuts)
* Carob Fudge Brownies. I did make some changes to the brownies . I don't have anything against carob, in fact I like it quite a lot, but I didn't have any carob powder, so I subbed cocoa powder in place of carob. I cut back on the amount of maple syrup, adding more soymilk in place of it, and since it called for slivered almonds but because of my braces I can't eat crunchy food, I used ground almonds instead. Oh, one more thing I had to do was cut back on the vanilla extract because I ran out of good vanila extract and had to use some that a friend made/gave to us. I'm not kidding when I say it smells like pure alcohol. Pure, pure alcohol.

Anyhoo, here are some pictures:


The easter egg muffins


The Blueberry Slump after it came off the stove......


...dished up and ready to eat


Boston Creme Pie (from the 4th of July)


Chocolate (carob) Fudge Brownies.

All the recipes in this book sound good, but I have my eye on a select few, mainly the Tropical Fruit Mousse, the Lovely Light Lemon Cake, the Chocolate Sherbet-Sorbet, and the Chocolate Glazed Strawberry Shortcakes. Susan, if you're reading this, try to control yourself. (In case you didn't know, Susan is a dessert fiend.)

Upon closing this review, I leave all you peanut butter cup loving vegans on a happy note: there's a recipe (albeit tricky sounding) for Peanut Butter and Chocolate Candy Cups.

Cheers!