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.
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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.