Vegan baking can be an absolute minefield. Half the recipes contain odd ingredients or expensive ones that seem to be sold only in the most niche stores and never at your local shop. I love baking and I was gutted when I realised that some of my friends and family couldn’t eat what I was baking because they were vegan/lactose intolerant/gluten free.

The following recipes are ones I tried because (on Pinterest) they seemed relatively simple. In reality? Results were...mixed.

Vegan vanilla sponge recipe from The Vegan Society

This...this did not go well for me. The ingredients list looked simple and entirely doable to get with my weekly shop, which was a definite plus. But what came out of the oven was oddly raw-looking in the middle - even though when I tested it with a skewer it’d come out clean.

Also, the suggestion for half icing sugar, half vegan margarine for buttercream...it just came out bizarrely runny. Perhaps more icing sugar next time? The texture of the cake wasn’t great either - dense and chewy.

No-bake Raspberry Chocolate Tart from Bakerita

A little more involved, in terms of quantities of ingredients, but it had me at ‘no-bake’ to be honest. I was looking for something vegan and gluten-free and this fit the bill nicely. I used ground almonds instead of almond flour (as the recipe instructed) although to be honest I suspect they’re the same thing. Could be wrong though.

All I know is this was sweet chocolatey goodness, easy to make (although it did take me longer than the 10 minutes promised) and it went down a treat with everyone who tried it. On the downside, I used the wrong sized tin so it came out very thin. Lesson learned I guess!

My ‘I don’t have any eggs’ lazy cake experiment - AKA ‘Banarnies’

This was an experiment in using bananas in place of eggs. I only tried it because I had the worst cake craving and no eggs.

Ingredients: 100g self-raising flour, 100g caster sugar, 100g vegan butter, 2 ripe bananas

Method:

• Heat your oven to 160 degrees (fan)
• Cream together butter and sugar
• Mash bananas
• Add the flour and the bananas to the butter/sugar and mix till everything’s combined
• Tip it all in a tin and pop it in the oven for about 20 mins (till a skewer comes out clean)

What comes out the oven is something that has the gooeyish consistency of a brownie with a delightful cakey flavour. It tasted great but came out looking as ugly as sin...pretty standard for my bakes if I’m honest. I dubbed them ‘Banarnies’ - gave them to the guys at work and they disappeared pretty quick!

The Best Vegan Vanilla Cake from Veggie Desserts

Oh. My. God. The name did not lie.

OK, so yes, it did need a fair few ingredients (I used WAY more icing sugar than suggested in the recipe) but I could still get them all at the local supermarket. It was so easy to make and the results tasted uh-mazing. It was the polar opposite of the first vegan vanilla cake I tried to make. It was light and fluffy and just tasted like great cake. Pretty much everyone was surprised to learn it was vegan when they tried it.

If you make any vegan cake? Make it this one. There’s also a chocolate cake version too that’s equally delicious - I mixed-and-matched the chocolate frosting with the vanilla sponge and it was gooooood.