I need to make a vegan cake. I am going to experiment this weekend.

I have a chocolate cake receip from CC that I am going to try (although I am open if you'd like to suggest another one!).

I am now looking at my frosting. Anyone have a good vegan frosting receipe? I usually make a traditional BC frosting (1/2 butter 1/2 crisco, powdered sugar, milk). I am thinking I go all crisco, and use soy milk in place of milk. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

I believe that should work because soy milk is vegan and I believe crisco is made from vegetables so it should be fine. Check your ingredients. Any mention of lard is probably animal related.

I would use corn syrup or water instead of the soy milk. To me, soy anything has a very distinctive flavor that you might not want in the frosting... JMO. My son is allergic to milk and eggs, so I just use water to thin it out with an all shortening buttercream (I do get store brand shortening because it still has the transfats and it tastes better than actual crisco with the water).

This is my favorite vegan chocolate recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Vegan-Chocolate-Cake/Detail.aspx

We use soymilk as a substitution all the time and I think it would be fine. especially if you use the vanilla soymilk. or coconut milk is tasty.

However, for icing, I usually use a storebought bakery icing. Satin Ice fondant is vegan as well, just as an fyi.

Hello, I'm vegan and if you are making this cake for a vegan they might not want the Hydrogenated oil that's in Crisco. You can substitute it with Earth Ballance soy marg and/or Spectrum organic shortening, both found in major grocery stores and health food store.
Not many vegans will eat hydrogenated oil, so I thought you might want to know. If you use corn syrup, look for no high-fructose corn syrup. (I'm sure you are honest about what you use when baking for vegans, so sorry for the extra info.)
Satin Ice fondant is safe to use and is vegan.

You may want to adjust your price if you do have to use soy marg, etc. It is expensive, almost $4.00/lb.

Good luck!

Thank you all for the info. In my research I found that regular sugar is not considered vegan (animal bones used to whiten). I was able to find vegan sugar - but just thought that was interesting as I did not know that.

I am going to bring them some test cakes to see what they like best. For each cake I've given them a list of ingredients and they can let me know if it's ok with them or not!

Thanks again!

It definately depends on "why" they want a vegan cake. As I said before, my son is allergic to eggs and milk, so sometimes it is easier for me to say I need something vegan, even though he can eat meat, than try to explain I need something without milk and eggs.

pinkpiggie78 - yes that is a good point. I never thought to ask.

I recently made a vegan cake, and I used a combo of earth balance soy butter and soy shortening in the buttercream. The soy shortening was kind of gross, didn't seem like it added anything to the buttercream. I think it would be better if you needed to use soy shortening for baking purposes. The soy butter was ok though...I would use only the soy butter next time for vegan buttercream. I made raspberry BC, so I used raspberry jam and it was pretty tasty. You could probably just use a little bit of water for liquid though...if you were making regular BC.

I've never found soy shortening (Spectrum anyway) to be gross but I realize these things are a matter of preference. I remember using Crisco, etc. many years ago and didn't like the flavor it gave icing. Soy shortening, in my opinion, is more of a vehicle than a flavor enhancer/mask, so I guess I agree. I read somewhere that you can get Crisco in flavors now? Is that right? Butter... I think? I can't use it because of the hydrogenated oil... it's much cheaper than my shortening. ( I bought some last year, but it was for a non-edible sculpture in an art show)

If I was to use all soy butter for my icing, would it become "hazardous" or does the sugar cancel that out? I've tried it and it tastes better, buttery, but it's less stable...and wasn't sure on the refrigeration aspect.