Tag: Step by step

Vegan Baking — Basic Recipes

writ­ten 4/22/24, updat­ed 5/22/24

What

Veg­an Pie Dough

Veg­an Sweet Milk Bread Dough

Vegan Pie Dough

Uses

Any pie: dessert, fruit, meat, ice cream, large, small, open faced, etc

Ingredients

Dough

2 cups All-Pur­pose Flour (+ dust­ing)
2 Tbsp Gran­u­lat­ed Sug­ar
¼ tsp Bak­ing Pow­der
1 stick (8 Tbsp) Veg­an But­ter (cold, small pieces)
2 Tbsp Veg­etable Short­en­ing (cold)
4–6 Tbsp Ice Water

Option­al: ½ tsp Salt

Time and Serving

Time: 20 min­utes prep, 2 hours set

Serv­ing: 1 stan­dard pie or 8 stan­dard hand pies

20 min­utes (dough prep) + 2 hours (refrig­er­a­tion) = 2 hours, 20 min­utes Total

Directions

  • Whisk Flour (2 cups), Sug­ar (2 Tbsp), Salt (option­al ½ tsp), and Bak­ing Pow­der (¼ tsp)
  • Add half of But­ter (4 Tbsp) and all of Short­en­ing (2 Tbsp)
  • Rub until Short­en­ing not detectable
  • Add rest of But­ter (4 Tbsp) and work until pea-sized pieces remain
  • Mix in Ice Water (4 Tbsp) with fork or hands (option­al­ly can do all of this with a few puls­es of a food proces­sor)
  • Grad­u­al­ly add more of Ice Water (1 Tbsp at a time) only until dough sticks when squeezed (should look shag­gy, not super smooth)
  • Turn onto plas­tic wrap
  • Shape into a disk
  • Refrig­er­ate until firm (~2 hours)
  • OPTIONAL: For a more flaky crust READ THIS. Fold the dough in halves, thirds, or quar­ters, push down, then do it again. Refrig­er­ate and let rest for about 30 min­utes, then do it again. Don’t over­do it to the point where the dough is gum­my and forms gluten, but it will make the crust flaki­er.

Pictures

Whisk ingre­di­ents togeth­er
Ice water
First round of but­ter and short­en­ing
Rub until short­en­ing is gone
Pieces most­ly incor­po­rat­ed
Add remain­ing but­ter
Even with­out water, it’s already stick­ing togeth­er
Add water a Tbsp at a time!
Mix it togeth­er
Almost there, but still too crumbly
Look­ing shag­gy, but still not quite
Very close
THERE IT IS
Stick­ing togeth­er well, but not too well com­bined
Lay out a cross pat­tern of plas­tic wrap
Turn it out. Note how rough it is still.
Option­al fold­ing for flak­i­ness
Fold­ed in thirds
Wrap it up and refrig­er­ate it
When ready to use, light­ly flour, and have fun!

Notes

  • Some­times the dough comes togeth­er with more or less water
  • Can use food proces­sor, but I pre­fer by hand to real­ly feel when it comes togeth­er
  • Prac­tice makes per­fect!
  • Cold but­ter is real­ly impor­tant to flak­i­ness, as is rest­ing time
  • Over­work­ing can lead to gum­my, dense dough, so be care­ful
  • Can make it dri­er or wet­ter to your pref­er­ence for what­ev­er you’re mak­ing

Vegan Sweet Milk Bread

Uses

Pull Apart Breads, Dough­nuts, Plain Milk Sweet Bread, Fruit Bread, Bean Paste Loaves, Gar­lic Bread, etc.

Ingredients

4 Cups All-Pur­pose or Bread Flour (give or take)

1 Cup Plant-based Milk (e.g. Oat milk)

1 pack­et or 2¼ tsp Dry Active Yeast

2 tsp + ½ Cup Sug­ar

1 Tbsp Salt

4 Tbsp Veg­an But­ter

Option­al: 2 Large Egg Equiv­a­lent (e.g. egg replac­er), 2 Tbsp Cornstarch/Potato Starch/Tapioca Starch, some Hon­ey

Time

Time: 30 min­utes prep; 1–2 hours, or overnight in the fridge set

Serv­ings: 2 large bread loaves or 36 cup­cake sizes or 24 cup­cake sizes + 1 medi­um round

Directions

Yeast

  • Heat Milk (1 Cup) to about 100–115F (too hot and yeast will die)
  • Pour into stand mix­er bowl
  • Dis­solve Sug­ar (2 tsp) and option­al­ly, Hon­ey
  • Add Active Dry Yeast (2¼ tsp or 1 enve­lope)
  • Light­ly stir
  • Cov­er and let bloom for about 5–10 min­utes (until it foams and smells like yeast)

Dough

  • By now the yeast should have bloomed quite well
  • Melt then add Veg­an But­ter (4 Tbsp)
  • Add Sug­ar (½ Cup for sweet bread, less for less sweet)
  • Add Salt (1Tbsp)
  • Add Egg Replac­er (2 Large Eggs), if using
  • Add Starch (2 Tbsp), if using
  • Incre­men­tal­ly add Flour (~4 Cups) and mix until it starts turn­ing into dough
  • Using the dough hook attach­ment at lev­el 4 on a stand mix­er, fin­ish adding the flour in small incre­ments until the dough comes nice­ly off the sides of the bowl, about 15 min­utes
  • Oth­er­wise, hand knead 20–30 min­utes
  • When it is smooth and tacky, cov­er with plas­tic wrap and/or a dish cloth, and set it in a warm loca­tion to proof for about 1–2 hours
  • Option­al­ly: cov­er and let rise overnight in the refrig­er­a­tor
  • Poke Test: It’s ready when you poke it with your fin­ger and it does­n’t spring back

Pictures

Notes

  • Let­ting rise too fast can take away from the fla­vor. Yeast appar­ent­ly likes 70F — 100F tem­per­a­tures. It is rec­om­mend­ed to stay on the low­er end if you want to get the most fla­vor
  • Good added ingre­di­ents: dried fruits, nuts, sweet bean paste, gar­lic but­ter, etc

2022 Ford Maverick Fender Flares by Air Design Installation

updat­ed 11/13/2022

N.B. I am a DIY­er with no auto­mo­tive exper­tise

  • Cost: $669 + tax
  • Dif­fi­cul­ty: Easy
  • Mate­ri­als: Fend­er Flares, Instruc­tion Sheet, 16 retain­er clips, Auto­mo­tive Trim Removal Tools/Retainer Clip Removal Tool (or a screw­driv­er, but much eas­i­er with the tools), rub­bing alco­hol, paper tow­el, polyurethane sealant, scissors/knife, tape, stool (option­al)

Ship­ping

Pret­ty tall box, light
OEM

They each come inside a sleeve
Stamped with the item part

Instal­la­tion

Instruc­tion sheet and fend­er flare

Wipe the install loca­tion with alco­hol, then remove the 5 retain­er clips (3 on the door side and 2 on the front end mak­ing sure there are 3 in between).

NOTE: The low­est clip on the door-side is a short clip as com­pared to the longer clips all the oth­ers have. This makes re-instal­la­tion impos­si­ble, so while you’re not sup­posed to remove the 3 towards the front of the Mav­er­ick, I swapped the mid­dle clip with the short one which fits per­fect­ly.

Remove these 3
Remove the blues, Keep the reds

To dry fit and mark the align­ment points, you place, and rese­cure 3 of the retain­er clips (don’t have to push them in all the way).

Dry fit
Don’t have to push the clip all the way in, you’ll take it out in a sec­ond

Instruc­tions called for a grease pen to mark the align­ment, but I used painter’s tape as a guide. Less cleanup.

Remove the clips and the fend­er flare, then per the instruc­tions, cut the 3M tape in the mid­dle and tape them off. Hon­est­ly, before I real­ized I could use a plas­tic pry tool to help, this was the longest, most frus­trat­ing part of the instal­la­tion. It’s impos­si­ble to get the edges peeled up with­out nails! The pry tool made it a cinch.

NOTE: As I’ll post a pic­ture a lit­tle fur­ther down, just peel most of 3M lin­er at the bot­tom part of the flare (clos­est to the wheel). Oth­er­wise, it’s real­ly hard to pull it off lat­er.

Pry tool is very help­ful here
Peel and secure more of the bot­tom piece than I did here.

Polyurethane sealant. I used Auto­mo­tive Amaz­ing Goop because I hap­pened to have it on hand. The lit­tle noz­zle I bought for it is super-duper help­ful. Use your sealant in the built-in chan­nel

Here we go! Same as before, place the flare on, line it up, secure it with the 3 clips. Now with pres­sure as you go, pull the red 3M lin­er off.

Pull and press

As men­tioned above, the low­est 3M lin­er got stuck under­neath and was dif­fi­cult to remove, so just pull most it off before plac­ing the flare. Makes it much eas­i­er.

Stuck. Had a bit of a time try­ing to get it out after every­thing else is secure

Yay! Here are the 2 front sides! After doing the first, the 2nd is very easy.

Mid­way point!

AAAAND here is where I hit a snag. As it turns out, the rear retain­er clips are ALL the small/short clips. And there are 7 on either side that need to be used. I tried, but they are way too short to be able to hold the rear flares in place. Thanks, Ford, for that heads up! So, I have ordered what I think is the equiv­a­lent of the OE clips and then a set of gener­ic clips just in case.

The installed flares look good, though. 🙂

CONTINUED!

The retain­er clips from Ama­zon arrived and, wow! I can’t even tell them apart!

Old vs new

Alrighty, then, let’s get installing! Removed the 7 stub­by clips from the rear. Here’s an image for size com­par­i­son. I said ear­li­er that the most time-con­sum­ing part of this install was peel­ing the 3M liner…it is not. The most time-con­sum­ing part is try­ing to remove these stub­by clips. They spin all around the place and it’s more dif­fi­cult than the longer clips to get a good hold. You get into the groove after a time, though.

com­par­i­son

Dur­ing the dry-fit, new, longer retain­er clips work per­fect­ly!

Peel, then secure!

Installed! Looks like I’m going to need to go back and apply trim restore again…the fend­er flares are clear­ly new­er

Repeat on the oth­er side! Now…I will add a warn­ing here, because after doing 3 of them I was get­ting a bit cocky. For the very last flare, I decid­ed NOT to do a dry-fit/align­ment tape. Don’t do that. It end­ed up fit­ting just off-kel­ter to where the retain­ing clips would­n’t even go all the way in, but the adhe­sive had already stuck and there was no going back.

It’s done! Here’s a before and after install pic­ture of the last flare.

Com­ple­to!! It’s amaz­ing how much dif­fer­ent the Mav­er­ick looks with the fend­er flares on! I hon­est­ly can’t real­ly remem­ber what it looked like before!

Notes

  • They look real­ly good. Real­ly.
  • Instal­la­tion was an over­all breeze after I pro­cured the prop­er parts. As you can see in my pic­tures, I do not have a dri­ve­way, but nev­er had to move my car out of the park­ing space to install these.
  • After a week of dri­ving, the flares give notice­ably more drag and there­fore reduce the gas effi­cien­cy. That part I’m not as big a fan of, espe­cial­ly since mine is a hybrid. Then I start­ed won­der­ing if the cab spoil­er would help the aero­dy­nam­ics at all or is sim­ply anoth­er cos­met­ic thing? The inter­net is not yield­ing any real infor­ma­tion about that. Hmmm…next addi­tion? 😀