Making a vegan cake from scratch with Alisha from Pink Palace Bakes

Sunderland Echo

Alisha Blunt, whose business Pink Balace Bakes supplies goods to two Sunderland cafes, shows how easy it is to make delicious cakes without the use of dairy products.

Transcript

00:00This is the basics of like making a vegan cake. So a year ago I started a vegan bakery business

00:05from home called Pink Palace Bakes. During Covid and the pandemic like a lot of people I started

00:12baking again and I'd been vegan for about a year at that point I think. So I kind of had to like

00:18relearn everything through doing it vegan basically and then that sort of made me think

00:23oh well actually yeah I really enjoy this why not make a business out of it. So there's a lot of

00:28different things you can use as an egg replacer and obviously that's the biggest issue that comes

00:33to mind when people think of making a cake vegan. The one that I personally like to use is soy milk

00:39because it's a high protein milk and apple cider vinegar or cider vinegar or white wine vinegar.

00:45You literally just need like a tablespoon mixing it with the soy milk and that creates a vegan

00:54So you leave that for about 5-10 minutes to properly curdle and become its own like

00:59buttermilk. In 2023 the good apple, the owner who runs that and she does all the baking for that

01:06she was going away so I basically provided cakes and bakes and stuff there for about a month

01:13which was great like helped push the business I got a lot more followers online and stuff and

01:18then it also gave people a chance to like try my stuff who'd never heard of me before

01:23then from there Cafe Floriana which has been open about seven months now a couple months

01:30after they were open I started providing bakes there very regular every week bakes will go in

01:35there for sale. I've just visited Cafe Floriana where I've picked up three sample cakes from

01:40Alicia and I'm going to sample them right now for you. Take a bite

01:43I would say this was one was a chocolate brownie oh s'mores brownie. Other things you can use as

01:54air replacements um flaxseed is really good for getting moisture into things so like cookies

02:00so stuff like gelatin. Agar agar powder is quite good and that comes from seaweed. Other things

02:06aquafaba is really great and I especially love that for meringues. If you're gonna buy it don't

02:11buy the four pound little jars of it it's literally just chickpea water so just a cheap

02:1750p can of chickpeas and just get the water from the can.

02:23I think this one's Christmas cake I think I prefer like this one because it's got more ginger in it

02:28actually so yeah I think I like this more than the normal Christmas cake. So I'm just gonna

02:34put all my dry ingredients together so that's got my sugar, flour,

02:37baking soda, baking powder and then I'm gonna give that a whisk. You want to make sure you're

02:43always incorporating all of your dry ingredients before you add the wet. Then we're gonna add our

02:47fats. For this I'm using vegan butter for flavour and then also like a neutral oil. I'm just using

02:54rapeseed oil because it's quite a flavourless oil and for the butter I'm going to melt this.

03:02Oh wow look I am a fan of white chocolate there so I can see with the icing on and that's yeah

03:06I really enjoy this one as well. So just melting our vegan butter there I'm just gonna add a bit

03:11of vanilla add our fats and the vegan butter there add the buttermilk in there as well

03:19incorporate everything together bake it at 175 about half an hour. You want to test it with a

03:27toothpick make sure that the toothpick's completely dry that's when you know it's done and then let

03:32it cool on a wire rack and yeah could you tell that was vegan from just looking at it?

03:38That tastes lovely. So I first had uh one of her bakes from the Good Apple Cafe in Sunderland which

03:43is Sunderland's only vegan cafe as far as I'm aware. So my son he had a 12th birthday party so

03:49I ordered a celebration cake uh from her because I know that all the all the stuff I've tasted from

03:54her from like various like bake sales and stalls that she's done has always been fantastic and I

04:00and I was like you know it's my son's 12th birthday want to do something special for him

04:03and so yeah so let's buy some uh some cake from Alicia. I mean I didn't even tell people

04:08at the party that it was like a vegan cake like you know they always just like you know here's

04:12the cake it looks great tastes great. It was really delicious I was with some uh some friends

04:16that aren't vegan but who have allergies and and really love Biscoff so my friend it was she loves

04:22it she wanted to go back specifically just for the uh for the Biscoff Blondie um that was how

04:28I first had it and then since then I've had some um I've ordered some cupcakes for a family party

04:34which was uh it's like people in my family and my partner who have a lot of dietary restrictions and

04:39kind of a lot of food makes them sick and you find with with like vegan bakes or vegan bakers

04:44that they're a lot more inclined to sort of allow for things that people are unable to eat like

04:49gluten and like you know allergies and things I think it's a lot easier to find food that

04:54is still just as delicious but is also like accessible to most people. My biggest sort of the

04:59thing that I worry about every single day is is climate change um because if things continue the

05:06way they are um more and more of earth is going to become uninhabitable we're going to see these

05:12massive migrations from places like Africa and places like India which are just going to be

05:18unsustainable humans just won't be able to live there they won't be able to farm there and they're

05:22just going to be fleeing up north and equally well in in England um once the uh once climate

05:30change really starts to kick in we're actually going to see England become a heck of a lot colder

05:34which sounds counterintuitive but England could experience the kind of temperatures

05:40and the places in in like Ottawa and northern Canada experience you know getting down to minus

05:4420 in the winter not particularly interested in in that kind of thing occurring and and food where

05:50we got our food from the food industry is the biggest industry contributing to climate change

05:56and so simply by switching to vegan we're all reducing our our carbon footprints um and and

06:04helping to to slow down and hopefully stop climate change altogether so yeah so when it comes to like

06:09a big big thing like 12th birthday I'm definitely going to go with a vegan option. You know it's

06:12not like a sacrifice you're making to eat to eat vegan food it's it's still very much a treat

06:17especially when there's you know bakes like these that are available. I feel like the s'mores brownie

06:22was one of my favourites yeah Christmas cake is a third and that's because I again I'm not a big

06:26fan of Christmas cake but I do like this one I've sampled. Having those occasions where you're

06:32looking forward to eating something really nice like with your friends with your family I mean

06:36there's no one on planet earth who doesn't look forward to that you know no one especially if

06:41their food if that food they're going to eat is appropriate for them probably for what they

06:46believe in appropriate for any allergies or intolerances that they've got so you know it's

06:50just a win-win-win isn't it really. If I had sampled these earlier and not known they were

06:54vegan cakes I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.

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