— Mollie Bower

Molly, I love this question so much because my sisters are amazed that I don't make my mother's butter spritz cookies. And they will say things like, well, there are, um, vegan butters. And when you try to explain to them, uh, you know, I was sort of baptized in the, uh, culinary house of Essel ston, meaning that I learned from the very beginning to cook without oil. So as a result, I don't make any traditional desserts that I knew growing up and I avoid vegan butters at, at all costs because of what they're made of, their fat content, their sodium content, et cetera, et cetera. Um, if you have any of the books from the Engine two family, uh, they have some wonderful basic recipes for, you know, breads and scones. And I have cooling behind me a banana bread that I made to take to a class tonight. Um, does it look like the banana bread that you grew up from your Aunt Rose? No, it's much, much better. It tastes better. It's got more fiber in it. So I think it's learning to make that transition from what you knew to develop a new sort of format for yourself, uh, in the world of baking. So I will say, um, and what I've seen as a new trend is that some people are starting to use tahini, uh, in baking cookies and breads and things like that. Um, it's a far more nutrient dense source of a fat because the sesame is rich in calcium. I particularly don't care for the flavor. I have had recipes, um, where almond butter has been used to make biscuits or, uh, peanut butter has been used to make cookies. So you might wanna take a look at the nut butters and you're saying to yourself, well, they have the same amount of calories, but we don't live in a, in a calorically identifying world. We live in a nutrient dense world. So if you look at, um, almond butter for example, it's just better for you. I've made beautiful biscuits with almond butter. I've made pie crust with almond butter. So I think that it's practicing a new craft for yourself so that, um, at the end you can feel really proud of the things that you make. Um, would I enter a baking contest at the county fair? Only if there was a section that said whole food plant-based no oil, uh, because, um, it's hard to compete in the other world of food that isn't as good for you. So, uh, in terms of cookbooks, I don't know which cooks cookbooks you're using in Fran Costigans book, she does have many, um, oil free recipes that you can pay attention to. And perhaps that Fran's next live event, it would be another good question to ask her. I am, uh, hands down a no oil kind of a person, and everything that I either cook or bake is done without oil or vegan butter or whatever. Toast is the perfect example. What do I put on toast? I might take some, uh, a ripe banana and smush it up and make banana butter, uh, or I might take, uh, a nut butter and add another fruit to it. So it's, it's such a, a difficult, uh, thing to surrender in terms of, uh, how we've lived previously. But I assure you that there are many, many things that you'll be able to create without using vegan butter.