Like a Vegan, baked for the very first time

Oh c'mon!  You know you like the title!

I've toyed with the idea of going vegetarian.  The whole process of how meat gets from the farm to my table kinda oogies me out (I blame global ethics for showing me that slaughter house video.. *shudder*).  Plus, the fact that eating a vegetarian diet significantly reduces your carbon footprint is a big draw.  There's just one problem in my fantabulous plan - I like meat.  I like the way it tastes, I like the way it smells when it's cooking, heck I even like how I can turn it into whatever I want.  As a compromise, and as a way to ease my guilty meat-loving conscience, C and I eat vegetarian once or twice a week.  I give credit to those who can stick to their B-12 and Iron deficient guns and go balls to the walls and give up meat.  Way to save the Earth, guys!

Now Vegan is a whole 'nother beast.  Going vegan means giving up any and all animal products - no meat, eggs, milk, butter, yogurt, or anything else that may have been processed in contact with an animal product (sadly, this can mean sugar too).  For realz??  That's seriously half of what I eat in a day!  How do they expect me to make baked yumminess without the key players?

One of C's coworkers has a husband who is one of these crazy vegans.  She mentioned that his favorite cake is this thing called a Japanese fruitcake, but that when she makes it all veganized for him it turns out dry.

Side Note: Japanese fruit cake is neither Japanese nor a true fruit cake.  Basically it's a phony-bologna liarface cake that makes you think it's something it's not.

Appalled that my vegan friends would have to go without both delightful dairy AND baked yumminess, I decided to take this cake on as a personal challenge.  How do you make a vegan cake that does not taste and feel like a hockey puck, you ask?  Well here's how:

First I had to find a recipe for this crazy cake.  Turns out that it's a Southern tradition type of cake that is served around the holidays.  Who knew?  Second, anything that was an animal product or that potentially had come in contact with an animal product  during processing had to be removed and substituted with something else.  Below is the recipe  - My substitutions are in parentheses.

Cake

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chopped raisins or whole currants (make sure they're not sweetened in any way)
• 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
• 1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1-1/2 teaspoons ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened (crisco)
• 2 cups sugar (raw sugar)
• 4 eggs (silken tofu; 1 egg = 1/4 c tofu)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup milk (vanilla soy milk - make sure it's not sweetened with sugar; the one I used was sweetened with cane juice)

Lemon-Coconut Filling

• 1 cup water
• 2 cups sugar (raw sugar)
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
• About 3-1/2 cups freshly grated coconut, or sweetened, shredded coconut (unsweetened coconut)
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/2 cup cold water

 Here's the link to the recipe if you want to actually make it:

http://www.globalgourmet.com/food/ild/2007/0707/japanese-fruitcake.html

I think it turned out pretty well!  It was tasty and C said that he couldn't even tell that there were no eggs, butter, or milk in the cake.  Here's what it looks like:

 

  

So what do you think?  Would you go vegan for this cake?