I’ve taken a while to get round to posting this, but I wanted to share with you all some of the delicious food I picked up at Oxford Vegan Festival. Held by Farplace Animal Rescue at the Kassam Stadium, a convenient ten minute walk from my house, the festival brought a variety of local suppliers of vegan products all under one roof for us to enjoy. Be prepared to be shocked at the amount of cake that follows, and the fact that I don’t have diabetes…
At the entrance, Farplace had their own stand selling absolutely huge cakes and pastries. I picked up a massive iced pastry straight away because we were there just after the event opened and I could see their stock was already depleting at a decent rate. Jamie and I enjoyed half each and it was definitely better than the infamous Gregg’s Belgian bun, which is sadly and definitely unnecessarily no longer vegan.
Lottie’s Vegan Bakery can often be found at Gloucester Green Market on a Saturday selling her delicious vegan versions of family favourites, both savoury and sweet. I have sampled a few of her treats in the past but this time couldn’t resist buying her crustless bakewell tart. I can’t remember eating one since vegan and it was exactly spot on, from the first bite I was in heaven. Safe to say that sadly it didn’t last long.
I’ve seen Elspeth’s Kitchen around at various festivals (I’m a bit of an addict for these kind of events!) and am always impressed by her beautiful looking stand and raw cakes. She was collecting feedback from visitors about their dessert-buying habits, presumably in the hopes to expand her business. Fingers crossed we might see one in a supermarket sometime soon, as I’d love to be able to get hold of one of her creations as a treat outside of the veg fests. Me and Jamie tried her gooey salted caramel date square, which was very sweet, rich and indulgent – no need for more than a small square to be perfectly satisfied.
Babbaloo’s Bakery is another food stall I’ve purchased from before fairly recently at Foodies Festival in South Park. As I’d tried their amazing cookie dough brownie before, this time I decided to test out the salted caramel cookie sandwich. The two deliciously chewy cookies sandwiched with a salted caramel buttercream were gorgeous and properly comforting, if like me you prefer to eat your feelings.
Lastly, I picked up an iced chocolate cake loaf to drop off to my friend later that day, who was having a tough week (Oxford housing problems, we can probably all relate) from Jack Bakes. It was a very generous portion for the price, and Becky said she thoroughly enjoyed eating it over two days.
As you can tell, there was an abundance of cake at the event, but sadly compared to the festival held in March, there was very little in the way of hot food, which meant the queues at lunchtime were ridiculously long, with far too long a wait for us to be bothered with. There were a couple of health and beauty stalls, and some of the vegan activist groups, but other than that there were actually a lot less stalls in general, and we’d pretty much looked round everything within half an hour. Having filled our backpacks with sugary treats, we headed home for lunch, which was a bit of a shame. Still, I’ve added some further firm favourites to my list of vegan cake suppliers, and I’m looking forward to the next event in my calendar, Vegan Life Live. Maybe see you there!
Vegan Eats Oxford 