Quest to find a vegan birthday cake

by Anne

My birthday is coming up and, as most people could probably deduce, most cake mixes, particularly chocolate (my favorite) are not vegan.

Today in addition to more spaghetti sauce that my family can't get enough of, I'm making a vegan chocolate cake. 

As I delve into vegan food research it has come to my attention that sugar is not strictly vegan. Sure, if you look at the ingredients, or ingredient, it's usually pure cane sugar, and therefore has no animal products directly in the food itself. However, if you dig deeper you will learn that most white sugar is bleached in a process that uses animal bone char to whiten the sugar. Therefore, because an animal byproduct has been used in the making of the product, strict vegans will not eat it. Learn something new every day. Since all I have is regular bone-char whitened sugar, that's what I'm going to use. Therefore, the cake and frosting will only be about 95% vegan instead of 100%. Alas.

I haven't had the full cake yet but the crumbs I just snuck off of the bottom of the pan when I turned one of the layers out onto a plate were pretty darn delicious. I'm excited to try it with the vegan chocolate frosting that we just made.

I tried almond milk for the first time today as well and I much prefer it over soy milk. It also comes without the freaky soy-related fears. Two thumbs up.

I shall report on how the entire cake tastes at a later date. 

Yesterday I bought a bunch of frozen vegan foods to try. Amy's brand didn't steer me wrong with the shepherd's pie, so I'll see how a few more of her frozen foods and a few frozen foods from Health is Wealth.

Deliciousness will hopefully abound.