Vegan Baking

The discovery of vegan bakeries continues. From Australia to Atlanta, eleven more now grace the Vegan Bakery Directory for your convenience: Astrocakes, Cakewalk Baking Company, Dulce Vegan Bakery, Fair Grounds Coffeehouse, Nelly's Vegan Bakery, Three Tablespoons, Sweet and Organic, Sweet Cheeks Vegan Bakery, Virago Baking Company, WaterCourse Bakery and Wholesome Bakery.

Don't forget to comment or review any of the listed bakeries and tell peeps what to check out. Or let us know about any that need to be on this list.

When I originally brainstormed the design and goals of Veganbaking.net, my aim was to make a vegan baking website that focused on all aspects of vegan baking without focusing too much on other alternative, buy still closely related, diets. I wanted to stay strictly on-topic. Besides, I wasn't really going to get much interest from raw foodies, people allergic to gluten and nuts, people looking to reduce their soy intake or people interested in cutting down on processed sugar right? Wrong. Since the launch back in the day I've gotten lots of inquiries from people looking for insight and recipes related to these close cousins of the vegan diet.

It's interesting how closely related vegan diets are to the dietary habits I mentioned above. All relate to a common goal: to eat what you feel is necessary and abstain from what you feel is unnecessary.

That is why, while you were sleeping, I painstakingly tagged the living daylights out of all of the the recipes on Veganbaking.net to make new categories for:

Raw Recipes
Gluten-Free Recipes
Fruit-Sweetened Recipes
Soy-Free Recipes
Nut-Free Recipes

The recipes in these categories still live in their original categories but now they're 'tagged' in the above categories too, making them easier to find if you have a particular dietary preference. In the meantime I'm going to be more inclusive of these diets as I go forward in my recipe designing and writing frenzy. And more importantly, Please help grow the usefulness of this site by submitting your own recipes so everyone can benefit! They're all Creative Commons licensed and part of the Veganbaking.net goal of pushing vegan baking forward to it's maximum potential.

Vegan bakeries are popping up like, um, popovers? And we've just added ten more of them to our Vegan Bakery Directory just in time for Valentines Day so you can support them and get some treats for you loved ones, or just eat your sorrows away. The latest additions are VenerableBean, Cocoa V, Red Mango Bakery, Fat Bottom Bakery, Black Orchid Bakery, Manna Organic Bakery, Sweet Compassion, Sugarplum Vegan, Violet Sweet Shoppe and Pure Sweets.

Does any one of these bakeries have something in particular that is to-die-for status that you need to let us know about? Spill the beans by leaving a comment under the bakery's listing telling everyone what to pick up the next time we're nearby. And don't forget, if you know of any vegan bakeries not on this list, let us know already!

I'm proud to announce the relaunch of the Vegan Bakery Directory. It's easily accessible by clicking on it's button on the top bar of Veganbaking.net. This bad boy let's you find vegan bakeries near you worldwide, get directions to them, comment and review your favorite eats they have to offer. Have a favorite cupcake flavor at Babycakes NYC? Diggin' the brownies at Gone Pie? Obsessed with the strawberry shortcake at Real Food Daily Bakery? Let the world know about it and spread the knowledge! And as you do, notice that the map displays in both regular Google Maps veiw with a Street View right next to it so you can get the best idea of where it is and maybe even see the bakers inside making their eats (well, maybe in the next version). Know of any vegan bakeries that aren't on this list? Let us know about them and we'll post it! If we only had a time lapse so we could watch vegan world domination unfold before our eyes. Mwahaha. For the people who have alreay submitted bakeries in the last month- Don't worry, we're on it.

• You walk by the local cookware store and later you regain consciousness and realize hours have mysteriously gone by.
• You have dreams of recipes that you must write down as soon as you wake up.
• You must sample everything at every vegan potluck you go to, regardless of how full you are.
• The holidays are your favorite time of year and you're not even religious.
• You get cable just for the food-specific shows.
• You go to New York City at least once a year to visit friends eat food. Or you moved to NYC for the food.

In most parts of the world Fall is the time that most living things sign off and get ready to hunker down for the long, cold winter ahead. Bears go into hibernation, leaves turn and fall to the ground... and bakers fire up their ovens! I look to fall as the start of the baking season. Warm summer days give way to cooler weather, shorter days and a sleepiness that demands Peach Pear Cobbler. Leaves turn into fiery oranges and rustic yellows that set the scene for comfort foods like Sweet Potato Pie,  Maple Cookies and Baked Apples.

Are you into vegan baking and have a desire to push it forward? Do you stay up late at night waiting for cake to cool just so you can frost it? Do you like to express your ideas and share them with people in a blog, message board or other public forum? Maybe you already have a blog or cookbook and you're looking for more exposure? Can you express your ideas in an entertaining, thoughtful and professional style? Ok, enough questions already.

We're looking for some passionate writing volunteers to take on our favorite vegan baking subjects such as news, articles, how to's, product reviews, book reviews and just about anything else that's vegan baking related.

We strive to be a useful resource for vegan bakers so they can bake things that rival traditional non-vegan eats and have fun doing it. If you're passionate about this too and want to be a part of Veganbaking.net please inquire within.

In an effort to make our site as powerful as possible to vegan bakers everywhere, we just upgraded our user community functionality. It's now easier than ever before to find other vegan bakers, connect with them, make groups for like interests and let the world know what you've been baking. Our user community currently consists of hundreds of vegan bakers and can be accessed here by registered members. Join us and let's push vegan baking forward.

We're actively dreaming up and adding vegan baking tips as we create recipes, write how-to's and accidentally cut ourselves in pure Julia Childs SNL fashion so you don't have to. We're trying to make preparing amazing eats easy and fun for you and your motley crew. We can't do this whole dream-up-baking-tips thing alone forever. That's where you come in! Send us your baking tips and help the world be a better place. We know you want to. Then we can all make even more stuff faster with less mess, bandages and third degree burns.

Send us your baking tips here and if we deem them helpful we'll add them to our tips section.

We've got no less than a metric boatload of vegan cheese on hand right now. You know what that means? Cheese-fest 2009. We've been shredding, melting, testing and tasting our way through the best of the vegan cheese lot and we had enough left over to make a couple pizzas layered with eight vegan cheeses and studded with ground Field Roast sausage. The crust is courtesy of Vinnie's Pizzeria in Brooklyn, NY. They'll sell you vegan pizza dough if you roll in with a few bucks. Easy! This cheese monster tastes as you would expect- intense cheese flavors coming through in eight different directions due to four different types of cheddar paired with four different types of mozzarella. This makes it the most authentic vegan cheese flavor I've tasted ever. We'll let you know what kind of cheeses they are and how they measured up in our tests when we post our review of them all shortly so stay tuned. 

We just finished a thorough refresh of our site design and the ganache is still drying on the web servers. We're proud to feature a more refined layout that's easier on the eyes, making it easier for you to find what you're looking for. Our page layout is now fluid so all the vegan baking goodness will look awesome regardless if you're viewing on a 13" MacBook or a 24" monitor. In our right sidebar we have new sections like Try This... which displays random recipes you weren't expecting to find. There is also a Book Reviews section in this sidebar now. You'll soon start seeing more photos under our Spotlight On... section in this right sidebar too. But we'd be nowhere if it weren't for your awesome vegan baking recipes. If you like where we're going with this, please submit your recipes so we can share them with the world.

Earlier in time we had a Facebook Group page. We've now transitioned to a Facebook Fan page and we know you're just dying to become fans of Veganbaking.net right? Right?! Our Fan page is much better than our Group page could have ever been so give it a peep.

Want us to showcase or review your book, latest treat from your food company or other related product? We just got our official address. For more deets, go here.

I'm proud to announce the launch of our World Wide Vegan Bakery Directory which has now made it's home in our orange top bar under Resources. This is a Google Maps mashup designed to connect bakers and consumers. You can use the main map to track down bakeries by region, or browse down the page for the breakdown of bakeries according to country or state. It's actually pretty cool to see where all the vegan bakeries are on a world map scale. Each bakery listing also has it's own custom map. Later we'll be adding things like route planning to help you in your sweetness seeking.

Know of a bakery that should be added to our directory? If so, click on the above link, read our rules to see if they qualify, then forward us the deets! So far we have over 40 vegan bakeries listed and we just know there's more than that in the world. So let us know!