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gingerannie
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I'm a novice when it comes to baking without eggs, milk or dairy butter. I can make a few things thanks to Cybele Pascal's awesome books and my mother's constant determination to experiment. I can get some cakes to rise but i have definitely heard conflicting responses to white granulated sugar. Is my recipe considered vegan if I have replaced eggs, milk and butter but still use white granulated sugar for my cakes and cookies? I want to share what I have but I don't want to say it is truely vegan if it really only qualifies as allergy friendly for my daughter.
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hotcooknmama
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Hi gingerannie,
The issue with some white sugar is that some companies process it with bone char as a whitening agent. This is always a process vs content issue -- the animal products are not in the finished sugar. Some people who eat vegan see it differently, depending on personal opinion; it's technically vegan, imo, b/c the food doesn't contain animal products, but ideally we'd rather support the producers that DON'T used burnt-up animal bits in the processing of our damn sugar. My personal choice is to buy turbinado sugar, organic beet sugar, sugar labeled vegan, or sugar made by a company who doesn't use bone char (http://www.veganproducts.org/sugar.html#brands) ... but then I don't sweat it if processed sugar is in something I didn't make myself, b/c you just can't control everything and that's not what eating vegan is about. I know some folks will disagree with me, but I think that's in the 'don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things' category; I would call that cake vegan and be happy with it, were I you. If you want, and are dining with level-5 vegans, you might add 'not sure about the sugar, though' if you think it might be an issue... for most planteaters I know, it's not.
We all just do the best we can do; kudos for getting so much animal junk out of your delicious cakes! :-)
HCM
The issue with some white sugar is that some companies process it with bone char as a whitening agent. This is always a process vs content issue -- the animal products are not in the finished sugar. Some people who eat vegan see it differently, depending on personal opinion; it's technically vegan, imo, b/c the food doesn't contain animal products, but ideally we'd rather support the producers that DON'T used burnt-up animal bits in the processing of our damn sugar. My personal choice is to buy turbinado sugar, organic beet sugar, sugar labeled vegan, or sugar made by a company who doesn't use bone char (http://www.veganproducts.org/sugar.html#brands) ... but then I don't sweat it if processed sugar is in something I didn't make myself, b/c you just can't control everything and that's not what eating vegan is about. I know some folks will disagree with me, but I think that's in the 'don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things' category; I would call that cake vegan and be happy with it, were I you. If you want, and are dining with level-5 vegans, you might add 'not sure about the sugar, though' if you think it might be an issue... for most planteaters I know, it's not.
We all just do the best we can do; kudos for getting so much animal junk out of your delicious cakes! :-)
HCM
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