Lovely outdoor wedding, and vegan cake!

 Great eco-wedding at the Brickworks (Toronto) - in front of the hills and the pool -- and then, a great reception - the cake is  vegan coconut lime cake! from LPK's culinary groove.

Vegan chef wins cupcake competition

Vegan chefs and their cakes are pretty mainstream, now - but Chloe Cosarelli is making waves by winning traditional cooking contests - you might enjoy her blog, and the news about her tiramisu and chocolate cupcake prize-winning recipes (as well as her Mango fusion curried cauliflower panini). She's even featured in the NY Times.

Gluten Free wedding cakes?

Wild Earth Bakery and Cafe offers "celebration cakes" - and they make extra efforts to avoid contamination:
Our unique line of gluten-free baking is made with non-wheat flours such as potato, tapioca, rice and coconut. Our exclusive line of baked goods is so delicious that you won’t even be able to tell the difference between our organic products and those that are gluten-free.

Cross contamination is a major concern for those that are Wheat intolerant or Celiac. We have taken every precaution possible to prevent this from happening. These steps include separate baking days, separate bakeware, keeping our flours separated and even separate tongs and utensils to ensure that anything that starts out gluten-free remains that way. We would be pleased to answer any questions that you might have about this issue.

Red Mango, Red Velvet

We had a great wedding this week at the Hotel on Rivington - (on the penthouse floor, with a great view of the fireworks for the Manhattan bridge!) And yummy wedding cupcakes from Red Mango - red velvet and double chocolate vegan, with cream cheese icing. Red Mango is located in Brooklyn, on Albany, but they are wholesale, and you can pick them up many places.

Wedding Cakes, Vegetarian and Vegan

Everybody's making vegan cakes these days, especially the bakeries that used to make Kosher cakes and allergy-free cakes. You can probably find a source in most cities, and you'll soon know if they really run a Vegan/Vegetarian kitchen. You need to ask if they same equipment is used for both Vegetarian and Vegan prep and cooking (that's why a Kosher kitchen is useful).

We wrote a post about hidden non-vegan items in menus, and of course they apply to deserts:

* The cake: does the icing contain animal products, such as egg whites? While this will be OK for veggies, any vegans among your guests will not be able to eat it.
* Honey: this is avoided by most vegans.
* Gluten-free (optional)
* No eggs
* No gelatin (for the fondant, use agar-agar)
* No dairy - no butter or milk
* No cheese (again, no dairy, so a cheesecake alternative is out, unless you make it with tofu)
* Often no sugar - but this varies by practice.

Here is another discussion of substitutions by a vegan chef
The most common Vegan cake is carrot/zucchini cake or a variation of the wartime chocolate cake made with cocoa and oil. If you eliminate eggs, you have no binders or leavening, really, so says the PostPunk Baker, though bananas, flaxseed, tofu and yoghurt sometimes work.

And course the ingredients should be organic AND Fair Trade and the business should have good labor ethics.

Because the number of merchants would be huge, here is a list of recipes, instead. Take these to your local kosher, health food, organic baker, and see if they can replicate them. Or do what we did, simply bake it yourself. You can buy the nested pans from any baker supply. Vegan cakes are usually heavy, and need a lot of support for the layers, so my husband made wooden dowls, but you can be creative.

Here are some recipes:

Vegan Wedding Carrot Cake
Vegan Lemon Genoise
Black Forest with flour
Raspberry Lemon Wedding Cake Flour, sugar, maple syrup
Vegan Chocolate Devastation with Tofu and Maple syrup
German Chocolate Cake with Apricots, oat/soy milk

Here's an out-of-date list with vegan cake makers in different states.
And here's a short list of some Vegan Cake Recipes (including Yellow Cake).