May Cookbook Review - Vegan Pizza

This months cookbook review is of Vegan Pizza by Julie Hasson:

I adored Julie's first book Vegan Diner so I was really looking forward to trying these recipes, my initial impression of the book was disappointing, with the exception of the pictures on the outer cover there are no other photos in the book. However encouraged by the success of the recipes from Vegan Diner I decided to give the book a go.

Firstly the sauces, I made three:

Tomato Garlic Pizza Sauce - This was fantastic. Very simple  - just 4 ingredients - but tasted wonderful. I will be making it in future for all my pizza needs (sauce can be seen on the Plain Jain, Cheeseburger & Mushroom, Broccoli & Sun Dried Tomato Pizzas).

Smoky White Cheese Sauce - This was another good recipe, it really reminded me of the Great Smoky Mountain Cheese from Vegan Diner (which is a good thing) and can be seen on the Sweet Potato & Kale Pizza

Cheddary Cashew Sauce - This was the best of the 3, a perfect cheddary sauce that I used to top veggies and in wraps as well (can be seen on Broccoli & Cheddar Pizza, Pub Pizza and below in a wrap)

One word of warning about the sauce recipes - as with the cheese in Vegan Diner they use a LOT of salt, I halved the amount and that was more than enough!

Now for the pizzas themselves. I usually start with the recipes that I didn't like but I liked all of them so I am going to start with my least favourite and work my way down to the best. I did sub standard pizza crust for tortilla bases instead as I'm watching my weight.

Sweet Potato & Kale Pizza

This was an unusual pizza to say the least - it was a layer of smoky cheese sauce, topper with kale and sweet potato. It was nice and the sauce really improved it, but it didn't set my tastebuds on fire:

Mushroom, Broccoli & Sundried Tomato Pizza

I liked this pizza, the sundried tomatoes added a level of flavour that would have been lacking otherwise, I did forget to use the pine nuts as well (oops) but it was still a nice and relatively healthy pizza. The cheeses that I used was 50/50 Tesco Soya Mild (made by Sheese) and Redwood Mozzarella. The only improvement I would make in future is to precook the broccoli:

Pub Pizza
This was a layer of Cheddary Cashew Sauce with red onion, burger crumbles (I used soya mince), broccoli and cheese. The cheeses that I used was 50/50 Tesco Soya Mild (made by Sheese) and Redwood Mozzarella. It was good but I made a mistake using the soya mince, it would have been better with chopped up burger:

Garlic, Sausage & Onion Pizza:

This was a really good pizza (sauce, Linda McCartney Red Onion & Rosemary Sausage, Cheese (Tesco Soya Mild), onion and sliced garlic), however I did not envy my colleagues at work the next day. This pizza uses lots of garlic and it was a little over powering:

Broccoli & Cheddar Pizza

This was quite a simple recipe - Cheddary Sauce, Broccoli, Cheese (again the cheeses that I used was 50/50 Tesco Soya Mild (made by Sheese) and Redwood Mozzarella) and chili flakes. It was made in minutes and was good for the fact that it had just a few flavours, again I would cook the broccoli first in future but it was still good:

Cheeseburger Pizza

This was an excellent recipe, sauce, cheese (The cheeses that I used was 50/50 Tesco Soya Mild (made by Sheese) and Redwood Mozzarella), burger crumbles (I learned from previous mistakes and used the crumbles from Asda), gherkin, ketchup and mustard. There were a lot of flavours here but all put together it worked well:

Plain Jain Pizza

I have 2 favourite recipes, this and the Cowboy pizza (below). This is a very simple recipe, just sauce, cheese (Tesco soya mild) and chorizo (I used a Wheaty Space Bar) but it was perfect, what I really proved to me is that sometimes simple is best. The cheese, sauce and Space Bar worked together perfectly and I will be definitely be making this again:

Cowboy Pizza:

This was really really good, it used BBQ sauce instead of tomato sauce, cheese (again the cheeses that I used was 50/50 Tesco Soya Mild (made by Sheese) and Redwood Mozzarella), sausage (I can't get smoky curls), onion and green beans (the recipe stated broccoli but I ran out). It was fantastic and BBQ sauce makes a great pizza sauce!

Overall this is a fantastic book, most of the recipes came together really quickly and tasted fantastic. Don't let the lack of photos put you off this book, if you are thinking of buying it I would strongly recommend it.