Do you have a vegan in the family who has a birthday or celebration coming up that traditionally calls for cake? If you’re not familiar with vegan dietary practices, you might not know what vegans do not eat. Even worse, you might have no idea how to replace what they do not eat.
Let’s look what changes you can make to bake the perfect vegan cake.
Vegans do not eat eggs, drink milk, eat certain types of sugar or eat butter.
Holland & Barrett, Evergreen and many other health food stores sell different egg replacements and the box will explain how much to use per egg.
Cow’s milk can be replaced by any of the different soya, oat, rice or almond milks and these don’t contain any animal byproducts. Be careful which one you use as the flavour of the milk may change the flavour of the cake. Soya or Oat are the safest bets.
Some vegans do not consume sugar, either, because sometimes it’s whitened by animal bone char. You can avoid sugar that is whitened by bone char by purchasing “unbleached” sugar. The ingredients will show you if it contains bone char. You could also use something natural like Stevia. Remember though, replacing sugar may alter the taste.
Vegans do not eat food made with real butter. If your cake recipe calls for butter there are plenty of replacements available at your local supermarket. Sometimes you might not realise it’s already vegan! I change my diet a few years ago to a low cholesterol diet and the spread I use instead of butter just happened to also be vegan friendly. Bonus!
The other thing to remember is how you’re icing your cake. Some icing or frosting recipes call for egg white. You can’t use this is a vegan recipe but you can get replacements. Supermarkets sell replacement egg white or you could use Aquafaba
There are plenty of replacements out there for any of the ingredients you need to make a vegan cake, you just need to ask. Of course, you could always just buy a vegan cake!
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