I feel like this is a big topic for every pastry chef. Let me tell you how I found the way to vegan pastry. Because I have studied to be a nutritionist so I know, it is very important to have variable sources of your foods. I have been eating cakes and other sweets since I was little very often and now I know there is a way how it is not bad for you.
Either you will compensate it with healthy food, for me I focus to choose 80% of my daily income only from healthy ingredients, the rest I choose what I feel like eating, to have my body satisfied and not desperately continuously craving for something. The next thing you should do, is to choose the right ingredients or already products that are made of quality ingredients if you want to “cheat”. As I said, I am eating my creations very often, you have to try what you create right ?:) , then I need to control the quality, we have 5 shops – so you can imagine how often I eat desserts:) But I have no health problems and actually I am quite a sport junkie. ( That can be my fourth tip actually – DO SPORTS!)
I like to switch between vegan and dairy and meat. I kind of believe in a balance in everything. The way I feel it is that it is not a sustainable way to eat meat or butter all week, but nor are coconut oil products. It is neither good for us, nor for our planet.
As I know that many people, especially men don’t like vegan food I chose the way to not tell my customers that it is vegan and I made the taste and look unrecognizable to classic pastry. I assume that it is well done, because I have tested the deserts on hundreds of customers and only one lady recognized that it is vegan. People love it. The cacao dough is made by vegan butter, there is baked almond cream with potato starch as alternative for egg whites, there is coconut vanilla cream from coconut milk and on the top fruit puree with cacao butter and pectin and soya chocolate ganache. We do more versions, the one I love the most is black currant.