Whether you’re baking for yourself, supporting someone else’s vegan lifestyle, or just looking for a cheap and easy eggless cake mix, this basic sponge cake mix is for you. This mix and either of its variations can be made ahead and stored in an airtight container, just combine all the dry ingredients and have a copy of the rest of the recipe nearby. Before you try this, or any other, vegan cake recipe, though, check to make sure your ingredients are vegan. Milk, butter, eggs, and animal derived shortenings are obviously don’t qualify, but ingredients such as refined sugars, including powdered and brown sugars, and food colorings may or may not be vegan depending upon who manufactured them. I’ve included a link to PETA’s Accidentally Vegan website under resources which lists vegan baking products from brands you might not expect to be vegan and a link to Vegfamily’s brief list of vegan and nonvegan sugars. When in doubt, try a local health food store or search the word vegan with the food’s name to look for a vegan version online. If you want to color your cake, but aren’t sure if your food coloring is vegan, you can use concentrated fruit juice in place of the water or soymilk. If you want to avoid the fruity taste this will add, try the green tea cake variation and sift a bit of powdered green tea into your frosting for a milder taste.

Basic White Sponge Cake

Dry Ingredients:

2 Cups all-purpose flour
1 Cup sugar
2 Teaspoons baking powder
1/2 Teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients:

1 Cup water or soymilk
1/3 Cup vegetable oil
1/2 Teaspoon vanilla extract
2 Teaspoons vinegar

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease and flour a 9 inch baking dish.

In a large bowl thoroughly mix all dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix all wet ingredients. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until the batter is just smooth. Immediately, poor batter into prepared baking dish and bake 25-35 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Allow cakes to cool completely before frosting.

Chocolate Variation

Add 1/3 cup cocoa to the dry ingredients. Follow all other instructions.

Green Tea Variation

Add 1/4 cup powdered green tea, matcha, to the dry ingredients. Follow all other instructions.

Frost the cake with your favorite icing, made with vegan margarine and vegetable shortening of course, and finish it off with soy birthday candles.