Soy Crazy
After a recent feature in the Connecticut Post, Hannah had a reporter come to her house for an interview and dessert sampling for the Fairfield Weekly …
Hannah Kaminsky’s sweet veganism, Fairfield Weekly ~ By Starre Vartan
“Most 18-year olds are so busy crashing parties and figuring out where to go to college they can barely feed themselves, relying on chips-and-dip or a fast-food session before they fly off to school or work or wherever.
Hannah Kaminsky of Fairfield is different. She’s got a cookbook, My Sweet Vegan to her credit and a second on the way; this petite vegan spent much of high school in the kitchen instead of the mall, testing and refining recipes, creating vegan versions of classics and inventing new treats along the way. Anti-authoritarian views and a sweet tooth led her to creating her own desserts: “I hate other people telling me what to do and I can’t follow recipe directions, so I have to make my own.”
Hannah also creates crafts and takes pictures; her pursuits are detailed on her blog, Bittersweet (www.bittersweetblog.wordpress.com). It’s a fun, well-written site about the creative force that drives her, featuring posts about knitting, to sharing news of kitchen implements she’s discovered, or a new animal-free ingredient she’s trying out. There’s recipes, too.
It’s the recipes that got Hannah her book deal, which she worked on throughout her senior year and finished last summer before setting off to UMASS-Amherst.
Hannah was inspired by her vegetarian friends, who filled her in on animal-rights issues. First she went veggie, soon after began eating vegan, and hasn’t looked back since. And while she favors animal-free recipes and blogs, she reads about all kinds of cooking. “I subscribe to over 300 blogs, from Post-punk Kitchen to Have Cake Will Travel to the Fat Free Vegan,” she says. “I have a huge notebook and I’m always coming up with ideas. Sometimes I have dreams about recipes!”
These days, it’s not hard being a vegan baker, and Hannah uses all sorts of veg-based substitutions found in area supermarkets. “Eggs are the trickiest.” Apple cider vinegar gives moisture and lift to cakes and cupcakes. You can use bananas or apple sauce to add moisture. I like agave or maple syrup rather than honey.”
Some recipes required some real experimenting in the kitchen. “I sometimes have to try things four, five, or six times before I get it right,” she says. Visiting her family’s home in Fairfield recently, I enjoyed a top-secret treat: a vegan lemon meringue pie. She wouldn’t tell me how she created the light, usually egg-white based meringue topper, but the recipe will appear in her next book. In the vegan cooking world, it’s sure to create a stir, as this has been a sought-after, but heretofore hard-to-find recipe. As she writes in her book’s introduction: “It was unacceptable in my eyes to serve a good vegan pastry; it needed to be delicious by anybody’s standards.”
Hannah will be at Borders, 1499 Post Rd., Fairfield, on Feb. 2 from 2 to 4 p.m”