There are some bakeries that would have you believe that their cupcakes are superior because they only use real butter. However, the world is not divided into ‘real’ butter and ‘fake’ butter. It can be divided, though, into animal butters and plant butters. Or animal fats and plant fats. One is not automatically superior to the other. It is more often the whole recipe acting as a symphony that will make or break the cupcake.
Using animal fat in all your cakes will mean that all your cakes taste of animal fats. You can mix in other ingredients but that cow’s butter has a distinctive strong flavour that will always be there. That might be ok with you if you can’t live without the taste of Cow’s butter but there is a whole wide world of butters and oils out there that you are missing. I work with many of them to create my little cupcake symphonies.
The proof is in the cupcake. Vegan cupcakes are winning competitions across the globe. In the U.S. in 2010, 22-year-old vegan chef, Chloe Coscarelli, won the TV competition ‘Cupcake Wars’ with rave reviews. Also, just this month Absolute Treats, cake makers in Wales, won at the National Cupcake Awards 2011 for best Free From Cupcake, Best Tasting Cupcake, and took the title as the UK Cupcake Champions 2011.
I bake vegan for ethical reasons so I won’t pretend that it is some happy accident that my cupcakes are free of animal products. You don’t need to worry if the eggs in your cupcakes are truly free range, or if being free range actually means the chickens lead happy lives, when there are no eggs in your cupcakes at all. However, when I bake vegan cupcakes I am not replacing or substituting animal products. I am simply using a different recipe. My recipes are not missing anything, they are meant to be like that. There is a whole wide world of plant based milks and butters out there that don’t need to come from animals to satisfy your taste buds. Branch out a little, you won’t regret it.
