My first-ever vegan sponge cake

By Tracy

<--BEFORE

Rose Elliott is a vegan-recipe genius.

I've never tried making a vegan sponge cake before, and many people think it can't be done, because traditional non-vegan sponges are so egg-reliant.

But since Rose Elliot's Vegan Feasts, as I mentioned before, was so good for the vegan cream recipe, I decided to try out her formula for this too. (My first impression of her book, years ago, was that it was a bit simple and obvious -- but I had overlooked her gift for "veganizing" traditional items. A friend of ours in England used to make a really popular chocolate cake that she had adapted from a Rose Elliot book by doubling the cocoa!)

The trick is in using a small amount of soy flour mixed in with the ordinary wheat flour. The cake also contains orange juice, not enough to give it an orange flavour but enough to add colour.

I overfilled the cake (not that anyone complained) with strawberry jam and vegan cream, so it's a bit messy, but the taste and texture met with all-round approval.

<-- AFTER (& there is even less of it now...)

Vegan pizza and other treats

By Tracy

This is what the kids had for dinner tonight: vegan pizza, topped with Redwood's melting "Cheezly" (a vegan cheese that comes in several different varieties).


There are other ways you can make vegan cheese and cheese sauces, many of which are detailed in Joanne Stepaniak's The Uncheese Cookbook, now revised as The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook.

Nutritional yeast, which often sells in Australia under the name "savoury yeast", is one of the ways vegans make "uncheesy" sauces, fillings and toppings (such as for lasagne).

As far as pizza goes, you can of course put anything vegan on it. This one was mushroom, olive, and tempeh strips.

The other vegan undairy item pictured here is vegan cream. We had a vegan "Devonshire tea" for K's 18th birthday a few days ago, and I adapted a method from both the Wakeman & Baskerville book I've mentioned before, and Rose Elliot's Vegan Feasts. The vegan cream is made by combining, little by little, a very slightly heat-thickened cornflour, vanilla and soymilk sauce with some whipped-up Nuttelex. The texture is such that it can be scooped, piped or shaped -- and as W&B say, even floated on coffee if you thin it a little. It tastes good and doesn't have that grainy texture that tofu-creams sometimes have. (Though I like them too...)