Chef Chloe!

Tonight I got to meet my favorite vegan chef, Chloe Coscarelli. As I said before, when I went vegan, I spent months and months trying to figure out how to eat. There were so many recipes I tried that were so, so bad. Into the garbage bad.

When I finally found Chole’s cookbook, I arrived where I wanted to be! Her recipes are easy and delish. Emphasis on easy because I don’t have cooking skilz.

Did I mention she won the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars with a vegan recipe?

She has a brand new cookbook out, Chloe’s Vegan Desserts, so she’s out on a book tour. She was at the Book Larder tonight in Fremont, a neighborhood in north Seattle. She was ridiculously nice and cheerful. She took suggestions from the crowd on the best vegan restaurants in the city to visit with her mum – Thrive, Chaco Canyon, Cafe Flora. And she’s visiting my beloved Mighty-O donuts.

I don’t have the new cookbook yet, but she made a recipe from it tonight called Beach Cookies. In our family, they were called Magic Cookie Bars – a Christmas staple. We tasted them and I have no idea how she did it. They didn’t taste any different from the full-fat, butter and dairy-filled version. She made a vegan ‘sweetened condensed milk’ out of coconut cream and agave. That went on top of vegan graham crackers. On top of the ‘milk’ went coconut flakes, chocolate chips and chopped walnuts. They were so good.

Half the time when I tell people I eat vegan they look at me like I’m a bit of a freak. How do you get your protein? Do you eat grass? No. I eat really well. And I love finding vegan cookbooks that have recipes that no one would know are vegan – unless you told them.