Essential Vegan Dessert – Course Review

I just finished my dream course, The Essential Vegan Dessert course through Rouxbe’s Online Cooking School. Of course, it was all I hoped it would be and more!

A little background for those that don’t know much about me…. I have been a baker practically all my life. From making “mud pies” in the yard to baking my son’s first birthday cake, opening a dessert shop and now making custom cakes & desserts for people through my personal chef business.

After transitioning to a plant-based lifestyle baking became a slight challenge. Learning how to substitute eggs and dairy and expecting the same results was frustrating. A lot of wasted ingredients, time and money! Also, while transitioning I was still baking custom orders for people that weren’t plant-based. That was hard for me. I struggled with having to buy cream, eggs and cream cheese for ingredients to make their cakes.
But you have to do, what you have to do until you can figure it out.

One day, while swiping through Instagram, I saw a post from a person I had been following and she was
showing a photo of one of her desserts she made as an assignment for this vegan dessert course. I asked
her more about it and she told me it was the Essential Vegan Dessert Course through Rouxbe Cooking School. I was so excited!! “What?? There really was a VEGAN dessert course out there?!” I had to find it and sign
up right away!!

After checking out the Rouxbe Online Cooking School, I saw they not only had a dessert course but they had a few other courses as well. The next Essential Vegan Dessert course didn’t start for a few months, so I decided to take the Plant-Based Professional Certification course first – more on this in another post.

Once I completed my certification for the Plant-Based Pro, I was open to starting the dessert course. I was so excited and could hardly wait!! I finally started my class in March of 2018.

If you are not familiar with Rouxbe Online Cooking School, it’s the world’s leading online cooking school. They offer an array of cooking courses to individuals, groups/staff, and to health and wellness pros.

If you ask yourself “How do you take a cooking course online?” Just take a look at their website and you’ll see. The online educational format is pretty cool with today’s technology. Their platform is very user-friendly, with instructional videos showing specific and very detailed cooking techniques. The course is broken down into units and within those units are several tasks that have to be completed. Those tasks include video lessons, reading lessons, cooking assignments, and an assessment quiz at the end of each unit. Throughout the course, there is also access to free “live events” where some of the instructors and other plant-based professionals (i.e. doctors, nutritionists, etc.) hold a live presentation of various topics followed by live Q&A sessions. A great way to interact with those professionals, like Plant-based Dietitian Julieanna Hever, Dr. Scott Stoll, Chef Chad Sarno, Pastry Chef Fran Costigan, and many others – and actually get your questions answered in real-time.

The process of completing an assignment was pretty fun, at least it was for me. But it can be daunting as you must document everything through photos. These photos must clearly detail your work or you will get points taken off. Which did happen to me a couple of times for not getting the correct angle or getting the texture right. So a simple recipe could take you a while to make with the addition of taking photos of the “mise en
place”, the “in process” and the “finish dish”. Lucky for me I love taking food photos. My family thinks it’s quite annoying but amusing at the same time.

Here are some examples of the photos they look for when documenting your assignments.

You have 90 days to complete 8 Units and 209 tasks. While the plant-based lifestyle is a healthier way of eating, these baking assignments are very much dessert treats. Which means they are sweet treats and sharing your homework assignments is encouraged, unless you want to gain 50 lbs in 90 days! Ha! Bottom line is you will be doing a lot of baking, documenting your baking and EATING your baked goods.

During the 90 days of this course, I did learn many new techniques that were very useful for plant-based baking. There are also many dairy & egg substitutions that can be used to achieve the desired results for traditional cakes, cookies, breads, pies and many other baked goodies we are used to. This course was a very valuable tool in educating me on all the options available to making not only fabulous looking but also incredibly delicious array of desserts.

At the end of the course you’ll get put everything you’ve learned into action and create a Spectacular Dessert Showcase. Here you will definitely want to invite guests to come enjoy all your hard work (or you will be eating desserts for daaaaaayyyyyysss!!)…this is also a great time to blow their minds with some amazing vegan treats!!

FINAL – DESSERT SHOWCASE

If you are frustrated with your vegan baking and tired of trying to re-invent the wheel, go check out Rouxbe Online Cooking School and the Essential Vegan Desserts Course.

You’ll learn some basic and advanced techniques that will help you master the world of vegan desserts. Whether you bake for pleasure or professionally, this course is a must!

Click either link below and it’ll take you there to get more info.