From the blog SuperVegan: Vegansaurus has brought on world-class vegan chefs like Terry Hope Romero and Robin Robertson for their Project Just Desserts: a veganizing of each week's winning recipes from this season of Top Chef: Just Desserts. Full disclosure of my secret guilty pleasure: I'm a huge Top Chef fan. Sometimes I have to close my eyes when there's a gratuitous amount of animal flesh on the screen, but I am such a foodie at heart that I love watching the creativity and the cooking process, even when I have to squint and pretend that the cheftestants are actually working with tofu. I loved the inaugural season of Top Chef: Just Desserts because there were so many stunning desserts being produced. And as it turns out, other vegans were guiltily watching and getting inspired right along with me. For the ten weeks of the show's duration, Vegansaurus published vegan versions of recipes from each week's episode of Top Chef: Just Desserts as created by our favorite chefs, authors, and bloggers. These whiz kids took recipes laden with eggs and cream and turned them into beautiful, animal-friendly dessert creations that rival anything that a non-vegan pastry chef could produce. From macaroons to mini-cheesecakes, the ten entries in Project Just Desserts are completely drool-worthy. And with Top Chef: All-Stars starting tonight, you can get inspired by the recipes below and then take on whatever the cheftestants come up with this season. After speaking with Laura, one of Vegansaurus' bloggers and the brave soul who tried her hand at veganizing the first week's recipe, I was totally inspired to tackle some of the recipes from episode nine. Read on for our interview and the four chocolate truffle recipes I whipped up. SuperVegan: Top Chef has been around for a while, but you decided to tackle this particular season of the show. Why Just Desserts? Vegansaurus: Well, [Vegansaurus editor] Meave emailed me with the idea of veganizing Top Chef: Just Desserts and then we brainstormed for awhile about decided getting vegan chefs, cookbook authors, and bloggers to do it so that we didn't go completely crazy doing every episode ourselves and then also, if people with baking and cooking talent do it, the recipes will be actually good! Also, it's pretty easy to veganize savory dishes, but desserts are much more complex! SV: Have you or your guest chefs found anything particularly challenging about veganizing these recipes? Vegansaurus: Oh yeah… Vegan Dad was freaked out about the Meringue but did an amazing job. Actually, I think everyone has had a momentary freak out when they learned what they would be veganizing. But seriously, everyone has rolled with the punches and every single recipe looks absolutely amazing. SV: How has the response been from your readers? Vegansaurus: Everyone seems super into it! I think a lot of us vegans are (closeted?) reality food show fans. It's because we're all crazy into food, I think. SV: Can we look forward to future veganizations of Top Chef or other cooking shows at Vegansaurus? Vegansaurus: MAYBE. I mean, should we? Would people want to see a whole season of the regular Top Chef veganized? I'm not sure… desserts are so fun but I mean, what will people do if like the winning dish is Chicken Cacciatore? Just use Gardein? Maybe if people did their own take on the recipes, that could be fun? Am I asking a lot of questions? BM
