A Vegan Wedding: The Cake - Vegan Bakeries

In the Orlando area, there are two vegan bakeries that do wedding cakes. The first one is BabyCakesNYC. They have a small spot in Downtown Disney, and all of their cakes are also gluten free and low glycemic. I like their cakes, and so does my fiance. I was a little worried that the texture of their frosting might throw off some guests, but we looked into their wedding cakes anyways. Their designs, however, are not very attractive to us. I can definitely see how they would fit in with other weddings, but it just was not us as at all. So BabyCakes got crossed off the list.

Raphsodic Bakery on Mills is the other one. They also have gluten free cakes, but it's not all they do. They are also ridiculously accommodating with allergies. 
My fiance and I have been there many times and think their wedding cakes are beautiful, but we just never saw their flavors as our thing for our wedding. We didn't want to write them off, though, because no bakery is going to understand what we want in a vegan cake better. When we set up the tasting, my fiance got to pick a bunch of different cakes, frostings, and fillings to try out. This was a nice change from everyone giving us plain chocolate cake when we didn't want chocolate cake at our wedding.
We tried a chocolate biscotti cake, a spice cake, a lemon caramel cake, an almond cake, and a marzipan cake. For frostings and fillings we tried a vanilla butter cream, a spiced vanilla butter cream, chocolate butter cream, chocolate ganache, and apple butter.
Holy crap everything was so good. The marzipan cake might have actually been the best cake I've ever had. The frostings were rich and flavorful and didn't have that chemical taste that so many others had. I was in love. 
When we started talking about designs, the owner was great. Since they don't use fondant and chemical food colorings, she was very open and honest with us about what the design limitations were. Within those limitations (which are a small price to pay for something so good and good for you), we could still definitely create a cake that would look beautiful and fit with the rest of our wedding.
When she gave us the prices, I almost cried. They were the lowest prices we'd been quoted for. I called my mom afterwards and told her the cost and she didn't believe me. They are also much more flexible with payments and orders than more traditional bakeries, which is great for us.
I don't think it really needs to be stated, but this is where we are getting our cake.

A Vegan Wedding: The Cake - Traditional Bakeries

A big part of the wedding we are working on right now is the cake. A lot of wedding checklists out there on the internet say we can probably wait a little while for this one, but since we'll be getting a vegan cake we decided it is best to start early. I'm breaking up the cake ordeal into a few different posts as we look at different bakers.

Since the all-vegan options in the area are limited, we decided to also look at traditional bakeries that make vegan cakes.

We started out each email asking if they were able to provide an all vegan cake. I feel as though this is a very important thing to begin with. If a company can't accommodate our vegan diet, then we would only be wasting their time and ours if we didn't find out right away. I think it's rude to the vendor and wasteful for me. We also tried to stick mostly with contacting bakers we had heard could do vegan cakes or who advertised alternative diets on their website. These are the bakeries we contacted:

Michael Anthony Cakes: His cakes are beautiful, and he advertises in many places on his website that he can create a delicious vegan cake. He was one of the first we contacted and we were very excited, but the response was disheartening. 

"The options are two fold for vegan cakes:

1) to have separate floating tiers ie. 12", 10", 8", 6" in a simple rustic design.

2) to have a small cake on top and to do cupcakes on the cupcake tree around

The main reason for this is there isn't a product on the market yet that is vegan that sets up like buttercream firm enough to put fondant on etc.

There is one that has recently been introduced called Melt which has come the closest yet. This non firming feature hinders a stack type cake being done."

He also said that it would have to be a "simple rustic" design. Rustic is not us at all. He sent us a picture of a vegan cake he had made and it was very ugly compared to his other works of art. We had our hearts set on a tiered cake, and also know that it is a complete lie that you can't create a vegan tiered cake, because so many other bakeries do it all the time!

Sprinkles: Sprinkles is an award winning bakery and their cakes are complete and total works of art. When we contacted them, we were told that they could do vegan cakes, and the prices they gave us were very reasonable. We set up a tasting right away. When we got to the adorable little bakery, we were served 4 flavors of cake, a few different fruit fillings, and buttercream. It was all on an ugly paper plate, but the couple next to us had a nice, pretty plate. It was a bit of a turn off but obviously not a huge deal. We were still excited. Then we tried the cakes. The buttercream tasted like bleach. It actually made me sick. I'm assuming they used a cheap margarine or something, since I don't know how else a food product could have that strange flavor. The vanilla cake tasted exactly like the very first vegan cake I ever made almost 4 years ago. It didn't taste bad, but it was very thin and dense, and really not "cake-like" at all. The chocolate cake tasted like mushy paper. It was dark brown but I couldn't really get a chocolate or a cake taste out of it. The other two flavors were a marble and a fruit swirl. The fruit swirl tasted exactly like the vanilla cake, and the marble was actually not that bad. The fillings were all fruit. They weren't horrible but they did taste a bit artificial. I'm honestly not a big fan of fruit in the first place, so I asked if there was any way they could do a chocolate filling. The woman helping us went into the back and brought a chocolate buttercream. It was actually pretty good. I was eating it on its own since I couldn't stand any of the other flavors. Needless to say, we crossed Sprinkles off of our list.

Cupcake Crazy: We set up a tasting after they told us they could do great vegan cakes and gave us an incredibly fair price estimate. When we got to the tasting, we ended up waiting for a really long time, and an employee asked us if we had to try vegan cakes. I was a bit taken aback and ready to walk out the door. However, my fiance encouraged me to wait and the owner of the bakery came out to see us. She was energetic and very, very kind. However, they only had frozen chocolate cupcakes for us, since an employee had sold all of the vegan samples for our tasting. The cake was great, and the buttercream was pretty good too.
When we started to draw out ideas for the cake, it turned into something very elaborate that I was a little uncomfortable with. My fiance loved it, and every time I tried to tone it down a little, I felt kind of like the baker and my fiance were ganging up on me against it.
In the end, though, I was overall happy with the service and the cake - I just wish we could have tried more flavors. Vegan chocolate cake is basically the easiest thing in the world. Vanilla can be a little trickier.
Another interesting note on Cupcake Crazy that confused me was that the owner is vegan (or mostly vegan, that wasn't very clear to me). I think it's strange that a vegan would run a bakery of predominantly non-vegan cakes. Especially with such a quickly growing vegan market and so many consumers looking to cut down on dairy, wouldn't it make sense for her to run a vegan bakery? I also wondered if she tries her own cakes that she makes for customers, or if she just goes by sight.

The Sugar Suite: The Sugar Suite was actually the very first place we contacted because I had heard that they do vegan cakes well. I was really, really excited for this tasting. We walked in and the cakes were amazing. Jennyfer, the owner, was incredibly sweet and professional. She served us a chocolate cake and a vanilla cake. Both were very tasty, and the buttercream was wonderful as well (if you haven't noticed, I take my buttercream seriously). We talked about design options and I just fell in love. I love piping on cakes and that seems to be Jennyfer's thing. We came up with a gorgeous design where she would copy the lace on my dress onto an ombre green cake. 
Unfortunately, when we got the quote it was around $800, and that's just too much.

Frosting On the Cake: We contacted this baker when the Citrus Club (a very pretty business club in downtown) told us they could do an all vegan wedding, including the cake. This is the only baker they allow for weddings there, so I took that to mean that this baker could do a vegan cake. When I contacted them, this was my response "No I am sorry. I do not do vegan cakes." So I explained that I had been told by the Citrus Club that they could handle vegan cakes and went on with my day.

Puff Pastry with Gingered Pumpkin and Agave - Happy World Vegan Day!

Yesterday was Halloween. I've been so busy with life, that I barely even realized that it was October 31st. This really stinks because I love Halloween. I love costumes and I particularly love making fun and festive Halloween desserts. Yesterday afternoon, when I realized I wanted to do something for the holiday, I decided I was going to make a delicious pumpkin dessert and I was going to carve pumpkins with my fiance.

Unfortunately, it's actually pretty hard to find a pumpkin to carve on Halloween. Everyone already has their pumpkins and all the little patches have closed down. So we didn't get to carve pumpkins, but we did get this delicious dessert. Puff Pastry with Gingered Pumpkin and Agave. It's a little bit like a simplified napoleon, and it was very tasty. 

It's a much lighter dish than a lot of fall desserts. No offense to pumpkin spice cake, but it was refreshing.

You can make the filling in advance and just store it in the fridge. That actually helps it to stiffen up a little and makes it easier to serve.

Filling:
1 can of pumpkin puree (or you can use homemade puree)
4 tablespoons of agave
1 Ener-G egg (use a flax egg or another egg sub if you don't have Ener-G)
1/4 cup of vegan cream cheese
1/8 block of firm tofu, cut into cubes
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
a dash or two each of cloves, cinnamon and all spice
1 inch of fresh ginger root, peeled

Pastry:
1 sheet of frozen puff pastry (check ingredient, most are actually vegan!)
1 tablespoon of Earth Balance
1 teaspoon of cinnamon sugar

Topping:
Agave
Powdered Sugar (optional)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

To make the filling, just throw everything in your blender and set it on high until everything is really smooth. Make sure there's no chunks of ginger and tofu in there, because that would be weird.
Throw the filling in the fridge and let it sit there until you serve the dessert.

Defrost the puff pastry and cut along the folds. Then, cut each strip into 3 even pieces. You will have one oddball square of puff pastry when this is all done, but I'm sure you'll find a good use for it. Place each of the squares on a lightly greased cookie sheet

Melt the Earth Balance and mix in the cinnamon sugar. Brush the mixture over the top of each pastry square.

Bake the pastry for 10-15 minutes, until everything is golden and puffy.

To serve, place one square of puff pastry on a plate and top with a big spoonful of the pumpkin filling. Carefully put a second square of the pastry on top, creating a little sandwich. Then add a tiny spoonful of the filling on top.

Drizzle the whole thing with agave nectar and sift some powdered sugar over all of it.

A Vegan Wedding: The Dress

When I first started researching vegan weddings, something that came up a lot was a dress. Books and blogs stressed how difficult it was to find a vegan wedding dress and how hard you'd have to work. They also said that bamboo and other sustainable fabrics were becoming very common and could be found by many designers in all sorts of styles.

I found both of these assertions to be completely false during my search.

When I started looking at bridal salons, I emailed every single highly rated one with the same email (I am obsessed with rating things and looking at ratings. WeddingWire has been my friend). I explained that I was recently engaged and wanted a dress that contains no silk or silk blends. Literally one shop responded saying most of their dresses were silk. The vast majority said they carry little or no silk at all.

Simultaneously, I searched designers that make dresses from more sustainable fabrics like bamboo and hemp. I did find a couple online, but their selection is limited to fitting just one or two very specific styles. Many of the dresses were of a very simple, almost hippie-like aesthetic. Which is perfect for some people, but definitely not for me. There are a few designers out there that can build you a custom dress from these fabrics, but they aren't in my budget and they aren't in my area.

Two of my favorite designers throughout my search were Maggie Sottero and Allure. They might not be your style at all, but both designers make all or nearly all of their dresses out of synthetic fabrics that are comfy and don't feel cheap at all. 

I ended up buying an Allure Bridals dress that I fell in love with.

If you're looking for a truly sustainable dress, they might not be the best option. But for brides that have veganism as the biggest priority and don't love (or can't afford) the bamboo and hemp options these designers are a fantastic starting point. Hopefully soon these fabrics will become more mainstream and feature a wider range of styles and availability.

Unfortunately, something all of the vegan wedding books and blogs don't seem to stress much at all is that most tuxedos are made from wool. We have a lot more time to search for a tux, but we aren't finding too many places that carry vegan options. Men's Wearhouse carries a few choices and the other option is a formal suit made from linen. If we find more as the wedding gets closer, I'll definitely write a tux post as well.

A Vegan Wedding

A few weeks ago, my now fiance proposed to me while on a picnic along a beautiful little river.
A few hours later, we started planning the wedding.
The two of us want to get married in May of next year for an assortment of reasons, so there wasn't really any time to waste.
Of course, we are planning a vegan wedding. Of everyone at the wedding, there will only be 3 vegans. My future husband, my younger brother, and me. Therefore we are trying to make it as vegan as possible and as accessible as possible.
While I've been planning, I haven't really found a ton of resources for vegan couples, particularly in the Central Florida area. So I'm going to try to post a lot of reviews and stories about my experiences to help future brides with their vegan weddings.
If there's anything that you'd like to see my talk about or share, let me know!

Dietary Statistics in the United States

Organizations sometimes try to cater to offering extensive gluten free and kosher products, saying that there is a serious demand over offering vegan and vegetarian options. However, that perception is largely fabricated.

% of US population that identify as Jewish - 1.8% (and declining)
% of US population with Celiac Disease - 1%
% of US population that is vegan - 2-7% (and growing rapidly)
% of US population that is vegetarian - 5-6%

What do you think?

Sources:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/01/america-jews-religion-jewish/2900871/
http://www.celiaccentral.org/celiac-disease/facts-and-figures/
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/02/food-issues-polarizing-america.html#more
http://www.vrg.org/blog/2011/12/05/how-many-adults-are-vegan-in-the-u-s/