about me:

Hi, I’m Kris Holechek Peters and I am the author of four cook­books, with two more on the way: The Damn Tasty! Vegan Bak­ing Guide (2007, self-published, no longer in print), The 100 Best Vegan Bak­ing Recipes (2009, Ulysses Press), Have Your Cake and Vegan Too (2011, Ulysses Press) and the I Heart Trader Joe’s Veg­e­tar­ian Cook­book, with other vegan dessert related tomes due out in the fall of 2013 and sum­mer of 2014. I am a vegan bak­ing fool cur­rently resid­ing in St. Paul, MN.   When I’m not bak­ing, I’m read­ing, prac­tic­ing yoga, writ­ing or spend­ing time with my fantab­u­lous fam­ily. In addi­tion to those activ­i­ties, I am a music enthu­si­ast, I play gui­tar and sing and I also like to fine-tune my Martha Stew­art instincts via crafty projects that I rarely fin­ish. I also enjoy read­ing books about pretty much every­thing. I’m a sucker for non-fiction. Things I like include: peanut but­ter and choco­late, fluffy kitty tum­mies and British tele­vi­sion. Things I don’t like are: get­ting up-charged for soy milk at cof­fee shops or the Oxford comma.

I have been bak­ing since the first moment I was allowed into the kitchen. My great-grandmother and my aunt were my foodie role mod­els grow­ing up and I learned count­less lessons from them in the kitchen, both in rela­tion­ship to the prepa­ra­tion of food and about food as com­mu­nion. Our fam­ily life revolved around some­one put­ter­ing around in the kitchen while every­one else sat around, chat­ting, laugh­ing and sam­pling the cook’s inventions.

I believe in the impor­tance of food to both fam­ily and cul­ture, which is why cre­at­ing mind-blowing vegan cui­sine, specif­i­cally bak­ing, has been so impor­tant to me. When we sit down with oth­ers and share food, a bond is formed. And if that food is lack­lus­ter, well, that’s just down­right sad. Amaz­ing vegan food is not only pos­si­ble, it’s easy! Deli­cious food trans­forms skep­tics from think­ing, “Vegan cook­ies? Yuck, what’s in those? That’s gross.” to “Heck, these are great! What else you got?”

I believe that no lifestyle or food intol­er­ance should keep peo­ple from hav­ing famil­iar treats nor should it keep them from shar­ing their treats with those around them. My end goal is to make things deli­cious, from scratch, and so authen­tic that no one can tell it’s “dif­fer­ent”. How­ever, mixed in there are plenty of healthy baked goods and reg­u­lar foods to tie you over until the next spe­cial occa­sion when you bust out all of the fat and sugar.

This site is an archive, as I have stopped actively blog­ging as of the end of 2012. This doesn’t mean I’ve dis­ap­peared, as I’m con­tin­u­ing to craft tasty treats to share with you in upcom­ing books. As always, feel free to con­tact me.

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