Cake-gate

[8Wina4]

I work in an office environment, in a team of around 20. Before the Easter weekend, I was chatting in the staff room on a break about how I've recently really got into baking, and one of my colleagues jokingly said that she wouldn't mind if I bought some cake to work for her to try. I promised I'd bring some home made cakes in after Easter.

Fast forward to today. I take in four different homemade cakes. I also took in some little vegan cake bites from Tesco, as we have 2 vegans in the office and I wanted them to be able to eat something nice too (everything I baked had flour/eggs in)

One of the vegans approached me at lunch, and told me that she was really disappointed that I hadn't made the effort to home bake anything vegan, and that I had promised homemade cakes, so I should have provided that for everyone. She said she didn't like the vegan cakes I'd bought from Tesco, and that she was fed up with being left out of team lunches/treats.

I was a bit taken aback, so apologised. But the more I think about it, the more I think she was actually the unreasonable one...

Thoughts?

Yes I've heard about those vegans, OhThereWeAreThen, mostly from my fellow non vegans. I haven't encountered them so much IRL. I'm aware that they exist and you'll certainly find them on forums, as you will pushy meat eaters with their constant bacon 'jokes' and cries of 'But, what if you were stranded on a remote island with a chicken, and what about protein?' but people are almost always more strident online than IRL. I don't think that they're nearly so common as people say.

My son is vegan. I hae tried making cakes that are gluten free (DH is coeliac) and vegan. The success rate is not high. A rich fruit cake comes out OK with either apple sauce or linsead egg substituted fo rthe eggs but anything light and fluffy is a bit of a problem. OP, if you had tried it might not have come out well, the Vegan was very ungrateful.

YWNBU - she was.

Not because she's vegan - there are plenty of lovely vegans in the world who would have been chuffed you thought to include them - but because she's rude and entitled.

Make a box of lovely vegan cupcakes (be sure to tell the nice vegan that they're okay for her) and "forget" to tell the rude woman about them.

Why do people always put a person's behaviour down to whatever 'difference' they're most aware of? Why can't a rude person just be rude because they're rude. Why is it that they're rude or other negative characteristic of your choosing because they're black/gay/vegan/Muslim/female/Polish etc? 'You know how bitchy women are? You know what Eastern Europeans are like, always taking the State for for every penny they can get? Typical pushy vegan. Why can't they just be a rude or unpleasant individual and not represent every other member of whatever minority or stereotyped groups they belong to?

Representative of.

I made some vegan brownies for work so a nice team member was included (just went to Google then followed a Jamie Oliver recipe), pretty foolproof and tasted really good actually. Everyone came for seconds!

If you're feeling really evil, bake that, bring it in and don't mention they're vegan until every last morsel has been eaten "oh, silly me did I not mention they were vegan? You can - oh no you can't, they've all gone!"

When was the last time the vegan brought in treats for everyone?

I'd tell her you are all looking forward to her baking for everyone and showing you how nice a vegen cake can be.

2 WHOLE days, JaneEyre07? Gosh. How you must have suffered

Why do people always put a person's behaviour down to whatever 'difference' they're most aware of?

They don't, but this person's behaviour was about the difference and her unreasonable demands were based on it.

"a shitty half-stale afterthought from Tesco"

If that is actually a direct quote, the rudeness is so towering, I am almost left breathless.

“The trouble is that a large number of vegans do, or have in the past, display a preachy, judgy, condescending and frankly unpleasant attitude towards non-vegans.”
You know, i’ve been around a long time and I can’t recall this behaviour from any vegan over the age of about 17! I’ve experienced lots of anti Vegan stuff from non vegans though. TONS of it on this thread alone.....

I would suggest she bring in some home baked Vegan cakes so you can all be impressed that she made the effort - only be sure to make them in a flavour that every single person will like

I’ve done a lot of vegan cooking and baking, and getting vegan baking right takes a fair bit of trial and error. Things that don’t need a good rise are easier, so brownies etc, but cakes are pretty hard to do well. Biscuits are much easier because non dairy margarine works just as well as (and in many cases better than) butter.

To get a vegan cake as good as one using eggs would have taken OP a few goes. Personally, I wouldn’t take something into work until I’d perfected it so it would be a lot of effort.

I’m vegetarian and I guess I’d have been a bit miffed if someone had made pizzas and put meat on all of them, but not enough to actually say anything! If you’d have been making something like that, where an alternative topping is pretty easy then it would probably be a bit thoughtless to not do a vegan version, but you’re just bringing some home baking, not catering a team outing.

Can't believe that there are a few people suggesting one vegan cake out of four wouldn't have been that hard

When I bake (and I used to bake regularly for the office when I worked in one), I do so because I enjoy baking ]cake]. And for the office, I would bake tried and tested old favourites and/or techniques with which I am confident. Not new experiments

As it happens, I have one recipe for a dead easy chocolate cake (called Cockeyed Cake) which is effectively a vegan cake as it uses oil, vinegar and bicarb for the raising and moisturising agent. But that is purely by chance, as it is one my mum used to make it.

I will also warn people that although things like my popular chocolate chip cookies are nut free, I can't guarantee that there aren't traces as it's not a nut free kitchen (but I do make a point of never chopping nuts on the board that I use to chop the chocolate).

The one vegan colleague is a CF . The other vegan colleague is lovely

Your colleague is a complete fuckwit - and I say that as a vegan!

Make a vegan healthy courgette cake, or something, with no fun in it, no sugar.

Or make the Good Food Lenon cake. Which is just like a cake. Only vegan.

Bertrand you have to be kidding. You are being a bit ridiculous by pretending that every single adult vegan you have ever met is a wonderful person, discreet and non-judgemental. I cannot say that about any large group of people. Sorry to burst your bubble but an arsehole is an arsehole. They may also happen to be a vegan but still an arsehole.
Also, please don't assume that just because you have never experienced it that it doesn't exist. That's just a tiny bit small minded.

Why the hell are people actually advising you to bake something for this CF?!!!

“Bertrand you have to be kidding. You are being a bit ridiculous by pretending that every single adult vegan you have ever met is a wonderful person, discreet and non-judgemental. I cannot say that about any large group of people. ”

I’m not. Vegans are just as likely to be arseholes as non vegans. I just don’t believe that they are queuing up to be arseholes about being vegan. Unlike the non vegan posters on this thread who are indeed queuing up to vegan bash. Not this individual arsehole vegan at the OP’s work bash. Vegans in general bash.

Ugh she has extreme requirements and shouldn't expect to be pandered to,

This colleague was very rude.

If I was baking cakes for colleagues, then I’d be baking cakes that I’d done many times before and was confident about - which would almost certainly be non-vegan cakes I liked eating myself. I don’t know how easy vegan cakes are to make compared to normal cakes, but I’d not want to be doing several trial runs for a cake I had no interest in eating myself. Given that baking in this scenario is a hobby rather than OP’s job.
I’d consider that I’d included the vegans by providing a shop bought vegan cake TBH.

Some pp’s have mentioned catering for allergies, gluten free etc in this sort of scenario. Personally I’d be getting them shop bought cakes as well. Not because I’m incapable of making gluten free treats or nut-free cakes - because I’d be worried about the possibility of accidental cross contamination if it’s an allergen I keep in my kitchen.

I don’t think anyone is saying for a second that this person was not spectacularly rude!

As someone who is vegetarian but can only take very little dairy I wouldn't be remotely offended, I would be delighted to be remembered at all (very used to the vegetarian options being salmon and ice cream!) How rude!