Hi All,

I have been asked my a very good friend of mine to make a vegan cake. I have absolutley no experience with this, so i have a ridiculous amount of question....

1) From what i've read and been told, there can be no animal by-products used to make the cake. So i take it this would mean that i cannot use
*butter
*eggs
*sour cream
*buttermilk
*heavy cream
Are there comparable substitutes for these items.

Also if i sub any items - are the substitutions equal.

2) If i were to take on e of my basic recipes and sub out the animal products with vegan products, how would the final outcome be affected?
*Would the cooking temp change?
*Would the cooking time change?
*Would the overall texture of the cake change?
*Would the flavor change?
For some flavors i do use WASC. Is it ok to use a box mix as a base and long as the additional ingredients are vegan?

Or should i just start from scratch with a vegan recipe.

3) Chocolate
Can i use chocolate? If so i can only use unsweeted?

4) For those of you who decorate
*is there a vegan fondant that i can buy or a recipe to make one.
*what about premade decos - like gumpaste flowers? are they allowed?

5) And finally does anyone have any tried and true recipes they would be willing to share so that i can start doing some taste tests. Im looking for:
*Chocolate Cake
*Vanilla Cake
*Chocolate Buttercream
*Vanilla Buttercream
*Fondant
*Chocolate Ganache (is this possible?)
*Some type of fruit filling


Thanks in advance for all your help (and reading my super long post)

Oh and if there is anything i SHOULD know about baking vegan that i havent listed, please please let me know.

Zakia

You should check with K2cakes. She has some vegan cake recipes in the recipe section, and seems to be very knowledgeable about veganism (made up word, but I like sound of it!!!).

http://cakecentral.com/cake_recipe_query-contributerbrowse-K2cakes.html

my co-worker is vegan and she made some margarita cupcakes.....they were AWESOME! I'll ask her for the recipe. I think she just found it on the internet.

For her birthday, I made a banana vegan cake with walnuts. Instead of decorating the cake, I just topped it off with sliced bananas, strawberries and chopped walnuts. Everyone liked the cake, even the non-vegans in the office.

I just Googled 'banana vegan cake' and found the recipe........dummy me, I didn't bookmark the website!! the ingredients were water, bananas, vegtable oil, walnuts, flour, baking powder.....I think that is it.

I'll look for the recipe.

I do some vegan baking, and you can substitute out non-animal ingredients for the regular ones in most recipes. The texture will be heavier in some recipes because of the lack of eggs, but if you increasethe baking powder a little that can help.

The recipes that I've found that work the best are anything that has oil instead of butter in it. I have a couple of vegan cakes that taste almost exactly the same as the regular version, and they're both oil-based. The vegan butter is basically the same as using margarine (you have to make sure there's no whey in it) so unless you adjust out the difference in water content between the margarine and butter the fat will be off and that affects it a little.

You can get soy sour cream, soy milk, soy margarine (or Blue Bonnet has a margarine that doesn't have whey in it, just check the label.) You can also use coconut or rice milk instead of milk. For the eggs, use Ener-G egg replacer, which you can get at health food stores or groceries that have a health food section. I use a little more than that instructions say to use, and make sure that you let it thicken up before you add it into the batter.

I agree with the point about the sugar, too. You might want to use an organic cane sugar that hasn't been refined.

Lots of vegans won't eat honey, either, as well as refined sugar. Check with your friend.

thanks for the answers!

i guess i have a few more questions to ask him in regards to the sugar/

i think i am going to take my existing chocolate cake recipe as a base, make the substitutions and see how it goes. For the vanilla - im going to try k2cakes recipe.

i had actually been wanting to buy the book "vegan cupcakes take over the world" so now i really have a reason does anyone have any experience with this book?

one more question - has anyone tried to make a vegan sbmc or imbc?

I recommend borrowing the vegan cupcake book from the library before you decide to buy it. I'm not vegan, but my kids have egg allergies, so I was looking for egg free recipes that I wouldn't have to use Ener-G with (this stuff can be hit or miss as to if it does the job or not). I loved the ideas in the book, but only really like a couple of the recipes.

ALL-IN-ONE VEGAN CHOCOLATE CAKE
(Serves
This sure to be a party pleaser!

1/2 cup soft soy margarine
1 Tablespoon vinegar
1 cup soy milk
1 - 2/3 cups all-purpose white flour
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1-1/2 cups sweetener
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons Ener-G Egg Replacer
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup water
Put vinegar in cup and add soy milk. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 2 round layer pans, 8" x 1-1/2", with Pam, or slightly oil and flour.

Place flour, cocoa, sweetner, baking soda, and salt in large bowl of electric mixer, and mix together well with spoon. Mix Ener-G Egg Replacer and 1/4 cup water until smooth. Add margarine, vanilla, soured soy milk, 1/2 cup water, and mixed egg replacer to dry ingredients in bowl. Beat with electric mixer for 3 minutes at medium speed, scraping bowl frequently. Pour into prepared pans.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes at 350 degrees, or until wooden toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool in pans for 5 minutes. Remove from pans and cool on cake rack until cold Frost as desired.




VANILLA CAKE
(Serves
Heres a simple white cake recipe.

1/2 cup soft soy margarine
2-3/4 cups all-purpose white flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons Ener-G Egg Replacer
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup soy milk
1/2 cup water
1-3/4 cups sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Spray two round 8" x 1-2/3" pans with Pam, or lightly oil and flour. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Mix Egg Replacer and 1/4 cup water and set aside. Mix soy milk and 1/2 cup water, and set aside.

In large bowl of electric mixer, beat soy margarine until it is creamy, about a minute. Gradually add sugar until well creamed. Beat in vanilla. Add mixed dry ingredients and mixed soy milk/water alternately to creamed margarine, sugar, and vanilla, beating after each addition. Begin and end with flour mixture. (Add flour in 4 steps, liquids in three.) Add mixed Ener-G along with the third addition of liquid. Turn evenly into pans.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes, or until done (wooden pick inserted into cake comes out clean). Remove from oven and let cool on cake rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pans and let cool on rack until cold. Frost as desired.

I don't know if there's such a thing as vegan meringue buttercream...Anything that you use to make a meringue is going to have eggs in it, and I don't think that the egg replacer will whip like that.

I'd stick to the confec. sugar version. If you don't want to use confectioner's sugar, or if you want to stay away from the white sugar, you can grind up organic sugar in a food processor and use that instead of the confectioner's sugar. The cornstarch in confectioner's sugar is added to keep the sugar from clumping up, so if you grind the sugar up and use it right away that will work.

One of my clients has a corn allergy, and she said that she found some corn-free confectioner's sugar at Whole Foods, with rice starch instead of the corn starch. You don't have to have the starch in it for it to work, but you have to use it fairly soon after grinding it up so that it won't clump up.

I LOVE my vegan cupcake book!! They dont even taste vegan, they taste super yummy!! My mother in law gave it to me for Christmas along with some other cupcake books, but that is my fav by far out of all of them she gave me!

Oh oh! The Joy of Vegan Baking!! It's a GREAT BOOK!!!! Good luck

thanks for the book suggestions - i will be hitting the library this weekend.
crazygravy - thanks for the recipes. i will prob half them and make 6" test cakes

not sure if you all knew this - but the wilton premade fondant is VEGAN.

i received an email from Wilton confirming this today

I have been experimenting with using Agave nectar instead of sugar. I have baked two cakes with it and also made a vanilla buttercream from vegan margarine and agave. Both turned out well but I wanted to know if anyone else has had any experience with this and whether I should be "creaming" the margarine with the agave or adding it later as a liquid?

Thanks for hte help!