I ate vegan cake, and I liked it.

Some of y’all are vegan-curious, and it’s okay!  If you’ve been watching any TV on Tuesday nights, you know that it’s okay to embrace your inner gleek and show the world who you really are.  So come on out, and admit it.  You might want to just try it once, and see what it’s like.  I, for one, just baked my first vegan* cake for little S-Boy’s first birthday.  Now, to be honest, I didn’t bake the cake because it was vegan, but rather, I baked it because I found it under the Quick Cakes heading in the J of C.

This delicious cake was served up with a side of Neapolitan ice cream and topped with a home-made strawberry sauce featuring frozen organic strawberries.

The last time I baked a cake from scratch, I put in all of this effort, with the whole beating of egg whites and whatnot, and then I somehow over-baked it or something and it was dry and hard around the edges.  Quite disappointing after breaking my back over the mixing bowl for so long.  I thought ahead this time and picked the easiest, quickest chocolate cake recipe I could find: the “Dairy-Free Chocolate Cake.”    No milk, no eggs, no butter.  One bowl.

And despite that nagging voice in the back of my head that was saying, “No butter?????  No eggs?????  A cake without any milk for Chuck’s sake?” I went ahead and made that brown beauty in about 10 minutes of prep time and 30 minutes baking time.  And guess what?  It was just as good, if not better than your average dried out chocolate cake.

Now, I must confess that I ignored the recommendation of serving it sprinkled with confectioners sugar and instead whipped up a big batch of butter and cream cheese frosting laced with lemon zest and totally ruined its dairy-free claim.  But hey.  I never said I was a vegan.  Just a lazy baker who doesn’t want to beat egg whites into oblivion.  I ate vegan cake, and I liked it.  I hope S-Man don’t mind it.

*Technically, for vegan purists, this wouldn’t be a vegan cake, since I didn’t use vegan sugar.  If you are like me, and are right now staring at the words “vegan sugar” with a look of complete and utter confusion and disgust while thinking, “Duh, sugar is made of plants, you idiot, of course it’s vegan,” consider this:

A truly helpful member of the Ho Foo staff noticed the biotchy face I was making at the package of vegan sugar and enlightened me.  Apparently some regular sugar is passed through bone char, a.k.a. animal bones burned into charcoal, as part of the purification process.  And technically, using dead animal parts to make a food makes it very un-vegan.   Who knew?  Not me, that’s for sure.  So, whether or not you consider this cake vegan or not, it’s sure to help your lactose intolerant or egg-allergic buddies when you are making them cakes, as I’m sure you all do from time to time.