Vegan Truffled Mayonnaise Recipe

The aquafaba mayo obsession continues! A few beautiful artichokes made their way into my produce cart, and I just so happened to have some aquafaba on hand because I can't stop making curried chickpea rice pulao. Artichokes call for mayonnaise, and hence this recipe was born!

I have a stockpile of aquafaba and some freeze dried fruit to experiment with now (Safeway carries organic free dried fruit, and Trader Joes carries regular freeze dried fruit)! Powdered freeze dried fruits are a wonderful way to use natural flavoring and coloring to cakes, macarons, and other baked goods without adding extra moisture, so I'm excited to start experimenting! I really want to make a vegan mochi cake.

Although I'm an omnivore, I've found that creativity can be induced when I restrict ingredients. I've made the most amazing food when forced to cook from my pantry, and cooking this way gets me out of ruts.  That seems backwards, but cooking this way challenges me and makes me create instead of following along.

Vegan Truffled Mayonnaise

makes 1 to 1 1/2 cups of mayonnaise

1/4 C      aquafaba
2 T         white truffle oil
1 T         white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp    homemade garlic salt (use 1/4 tsp if using store-bought garlic salt)
1 T         Dijon mustard
3/4-1 C   peanut oil (any neutral oil will do)

special equipment: immersion blender or blender

Blend together the aquafaba, white truffle oil, white wine vinegar, garlic salt, and Dijon mustard on low speed. After a few seconds, start drizzling in the oil until the mixture emulsifies. Continue to add at least 3/4 C oil. Stop blending and taste the mixture, adding more salt or vinegar if necessary

Aquafaba Basil and Sherry Mayonnaise

After this week's success with the black bean aquafaba macarons, I decided to try my hand at mayonnaise. I've made egg mayonnaise plenty of times with my immersion blender, using one egg for a batch. I find that this is the perfect amount for my mayo needs, and this usually goes hand in hand with the asparagus and tomato seasons.

It worked! Other than substituting 1/4 C of reduced aquafaba for one whole egg, the recipe is the same as the non-vegan version.

A note about aquafaba: to use it as an egg substitute, the aquafaba should be reduced to the consistency of egg whites. When I first started experimenting with the stuff, I'd refrigerate it after reducing. If the aquafaba gelled in the refrigerator, it has been reduced too much and you'll end up with really dense macarons or mayo. No worries, though, because you can always think it out with a little bit of water.

Aquafaba Basil and Sherry Mayonnaise

1/4 C        reduced aquafaba (I used black bean water aquafaba)
1 tsp         sherry vinegar
1 tsp         mustard
1/2 tsp      salt
3/4 - 1 C  peanut oil (any neutral oil will do)
1/4 C        loosely packed fresh basil leaves

Special equipment: immersion blender or blender

Blend together at low speed the aquafaba, sherry vinegar, mustard, and salt. After a few seconds, start slowly adding the oil until the mixture emulsifies. This usually takes me about 3/4 cup of oil, but sometimes it takes a little more. When you get the desired consistency, add the basil leaves and blend until incorporated. Taste for salt and vinegar and adjust if necessary.

Black Bean Macarons

Since I am sick of eating chickpeas in any form, I decided to make vegan macarons using black beans. Black beans are way more tasty. (Have you ever tried refried black beans mashed with a fruity olive oil and chipotles in adobo? If not, hop to it!)

The black bean aquafaba did not look promising at first. I had whip it on high for at least 10 minutes before it got to the soft peak stage. Once I added the sugar, though, it whipped up just like the chickpea aquafaba. There is now way I could have whipped this liquid up by hand, though, because it was going for at least 15 minutes.

The resulting macaron shells were a lovely shade of light purple. I filled these guys with a pistachio/cocoa/chili ganache to play up the slight fruitiness of the black bean macarons.

I am so relieved that I can make macarons with other types of bean liquid because chickpeas were becoming boring! On the Vegan Meringue group on Facebook, others have reported that they can make meringues from lentil aquafaba, kidney bean aquafaba, and the water that's packaged with fresh tofu. This stuff is so fun to experiment with! 

Has anyone else tried making these and, if so, what type of liquid did you use?

Macarons! Whoop whoop!

Finally! I've made 5 small batches of vegan macrons, and it wasn't until the 5th try that I got both feet and no raw middles. To celebrate, I made a coconut pistachio ganache for filling. I wish I had a small piping bag so I could make the filling pretty, but it's me we're talking about! It took me a long time to get the macarons right because I kept on doing stupid things like opening the oven early, peeling them off the parchment paper before they were cooled, and refusing to weigh my ingredients. Baking is tedious for me, while cooking is relaxing. However, I was determined to make these because making macarons out of something I regularly pour down the drain (chickpea cooking liquid) is magical and appeals to my thrifty ways.

What isn't thrifty is almond flour. The brand I like to use, Bob's Red Mill, goes for about $13/lb when packaged. I like this brand because they grind up blanched almonds, so the bitter skins are removed. However, while at Safeway to purchase a 24-pack of chicken hot dogs (disgusting training treats for Sesame), I saw that there is now a huge bulk section. Safeway had Bob's Red Mill almond flour in bulk, and it was $6.49/lb. Score! Their organic nuts and beans were also several dollars cheaper than other stores, so if you don't think Safeway is the devil, go for it!

Floral Frosting's and Let's Go Bake a Cake's vegan macaron recipes and were helpful. I followed the second recipe, listing all the ingredients by weight and omitting the coloring and seam seeds. Avocados and Ales also has a killer macaron troubleshooting guide. There  Facebook group Vegan Meringues - Hits and Misses is also a great resource that includes lots of pretty and sometimes hilariously sad pictures of people's aquafaba experiments.

For the macaron filling, I winged it. Although I'm not vegan and I could have made a buttercream, I stuck to the vegan theme and made a pistachio ganache that is dairy-free. I'll post the recipe below in case anyone else is interested in trying it.


Pistachio Ganache

1/4 c   raw pistachios, whole

1 T     water or non-dairy milk

1/2 c   powdered sugar

2 T     refined coconut oil
pinch of salt

Pulse the pistachios to a powder using a Vitamix or other blender. Set aside.

In mixer, using paddle attachment, mix the coconut oil on medium speed. Add powdered sugar and ground nuts. Add water or non-dairy milk 1 T at a time, adding more if needed to make the paste spreadable.

Aquafaba is Weird and Wonderful

Liquid leftover from cooking chickpeas, when whipped with sugar and vanilla, tastes just like marshmallow fluff!  The aquafaba (water + bean) craze has been going around mostly the vegan blogosphere for the past few months, but it was new to me.

When baked, said marshmallow fluff turns into meringues. Vegan meringues taste just like eggy meringues, too!

I've taking some good-natured ribbing about turning chickpea brine into a dessert, but how is it any different or grosser than using egg whites? Egg whites are just as slimy as gooey as chickpea brine. It's a matter of perspective. Also, to mask the eggy taste, lots of recipes call for vanilla, and eggless meringues benefit from vanilla as well to mask any perceived bean taste.

Personally, I'm all for kitchen experiments. I'm not vegan by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like the idea of taking something that was formerly a waste product and turning it into something fabulous and cool or making something, like cheese, out of nuts. My next experiment is going to be aquafaba mayonnaise.  Fortunately, I have plenty of canned chickpeas (I pressure can big batches of beans once every 3 months), so I have organic aquafaba galore!

I'm a deficient baker, so if anyone has any idea why my meringues turned out hollow, please leave me a comment! I added 1/2 c of sugar to probably 1/3 cup of aquafaba, and baked these at 200 °F for 2 hours. I don't think I ever made traditional meringues before, so this is all new to me.