Vegan bakery makes do without

Head baker and sometimes decorator Jenny Webb likes being surrounded by cakes and sweets all day and she is not above sampling her work.

“I still like to eat the product I make,” says Ms. Webb, 30, of Silver Spring. “I just don’t get to do it too frequently.”

Ms. Webb, who works at Sticky Fingers Bakery in the District, does many jobs at the shop, whose products are entirely vegan.

Decorating, though, is Ms. Webb’s favorite part of the cake-making process.

After nine months of training at L’Academie de Cuisine, a pastry school in Gaithersburg, Ms. Webb has worked in baking and decorating since she graduated in summer 2003.

“I liked sculpture and ceramics in school,” she says. “I kind of thought of it like a sculpture.”

Sticky Fingers is a vegan bakery, meaning it uses no animal products. The baking is different because vegan ingredients react differently than animal products, says Doron Petersan, 34, co-owner of the bakery.

“The way we mix things is how we can alleviate not using dairy,” she says.

Ms. Webb, who is not formally trained as a vegan baker and is not a vegan, says the vegan-only ingredients make it harder to experiment with new cake flavors. The bakery tried out a lemon pound cake, but eventually decided it was not up to taste standards, she says.

Ms. Webb’s day begins at around 7 or 8 a.m., usually with baking. While the store’s entire staff totals 18, including the deli and coffee staff, only three persons make the sweets. So Ms. Webb often fills in when help is needed.

In fact, teamwork plays a big part in creating and decorating cakes at Sticky Fingers Bakery, she says.

The cake process begins with making the batter. Although some special vegan ingredients are needed, the batter is mostly just “regular cake stuff,” says Betsy Hallstrom, 25 from the District, who on this day is baking the cakes. She says the process takes about 30 minutes.

“This is what makes us different from other bakeries — the egg replacer,” she says, as she pours the liquid substance into vanilla cake batter. Egg replacer, she explains, is a leavening agent that substitutes for regular eggs. The bakery also uses non-dairy, non-hydrogenated margarine.

Once the batter is finished, it is scooped into oiled and floured cake pans — one batch of batter makes about three 9-inch cakes, three 6-inch cakes and two dozen cupcakes — and put in the oven for 15 to 25 minutes. After cooling, some of the cakes go to Ms. Webb for decorating.

“Pretty much whatever you could think of, you can get on a cake,” Ms. Webb says.

While about six cakes were created this day, that number can get as high as 20 on weekends.

Frosting can be a challenge, especially when it is not at room temperature, Ms. Webb says. But the occasional decorating mistake can often be corrected without starting over, she adds.

“I don’t find it challenging though because I like doing it,” she says.

Last week, Ms. Webb was decorating what the store calls a Cookies N’ Cake, which she says is “like a cookies n’ cream cake.” The chocolate cake is stacked three layers high with a mix of vegan vanilla buttercream frosting and chocolate cake pieces between each layer. She then smoothes the frosting over the entire cake with an offset spatula, making sure there are no blemishes.

To finish, she squeezes dollops of vanilla frosting along the top and bottom edges of the circular cake. She places fourths of an Oreolike cookie on each dollop, adding an appealing and tasty touch. The kitchen-made vanilla frosting comes from 18-quart containers.

“Now I have this pretty thing sitting here,” Ms. Webb says. “It’s kind of like art, but I don’t take it really seriously.”