I bought this book because I am trying to cut down on saturated fat and get more produce in my diet, I also bake vegan, no sugar desserts as a hobby. So far, the two best recipes have been the 10 minute brownies and the seitan salad. For the brownies, I substituted spelt flour and used maple syrup instead of sugar. They were divine: moist, chewy and fudgy, the first vegan brownies I've made that were actually good. I made the seitan salad sandwiches to take to work for lunch. They seem to develop the best flavor if you let the seitan salad sit overnight to meld the flavors. It is very tasty and similar to a chicken salad sandwich. The texture of the seitan works perfectly!
Unfortunately, other recipes were not as successful. The pumpkin scones are extremely bland. I had some pumpkin left over so I made another batch this weekend, I tried tweaking things a bit: adding more sweetener, tossing in some cinnamon and nutmeg, but it didn't help. They were still incredibly bland. Pleasant, just not "wow." To the author's credit, these do seem to be intended to be more like a dinner roll to go with chili or soup, she says to eat them hot out of the oven and they are best that way. The coconut tapioca was terrible: bland and flavorless, not worth the effort at all. Likewise, the Spanish tomato soup was almost inedible, with a very strange flavor. It was also not edited well, as the recipe calls for miso and then doesn't tell you when or how to add it to the soup. I put it in at the end.
I'm not a student, but the recipes don't seem that expensive to me. They are much simpler and cheaper than a lot of the vegan cookbooks I have. There are more recipes that intrigue me, I'm trying the vegan baked beans this week. But the recipes do seem very hit and miss in their quality.

I bought this book right when it first came out entirely upon the strength of Carole Raymond's other cookbook, the "Student's Vegetarian Cookbook," which I would describe as the perfect cookbook for people who can't cook. I was expecting more of the same easy, cheap, quick, and great tasting recipes I had found there. Unfortunately, the "Student's Go Vegan Cookbook" is a disappointment on every single one of those attributes. The recipes found here are more complicated, more expensive, more time consuming, and just less useful than the ones in the previous book.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are some hidden gems in this book as well, but that just it: they're hidden! Time and time again I find myself hungry and flipping through this book saying to myself: "nope... nope... nope..." because everything I see isn't a meal, it's just part of a meal. If you filter out the endless array of salads, dips, dressings, toppings, and side dishes you are left with a scant few actual meals. I'm an active (mostly) vegan male, and need hearty and healthy food to keep me running, not salads and side dishes! The idea seems to be that the author is giving you all the building blocks so you can go and create your own meal. All I can say is that's what people who can cook do... and if I could do that I wouldn't need this book in the first place!

I have no idea why Carole Raymond decided to organize the book like this. I don't have time to cook all day and combine 6 recipes into one full meal - that's why I bought this book. The great thing about the Student's Vegetarian Cookbook is that almost every page seems to have a complete meal on it, and the same thing just can't be said about the Vegan version. As a warning, I also find the book to be very heavy on Tempeh and Tofu recipes. I personally cannot stand Tempeh and don't like to eat tofu every day, so that also discounts a large number of recipes for me.

In considering this book, one does need to realize the reality that cooking vegan is harder then cooking vegetarian... but I don't think it has to be THIS hard. I think Carole Raymond needs to re-evaluate exactly who her target audience is here. I generally like Raymond's recipes, and I'd love to see a stripped down version of this book, with a renewed focus on quick, easy, complete meals. As things stand, there are some great recipes in this book... but I just don't find it all that useful.