Part 3: ‘The Anti-Consumerist DIY (vegan) Chocolate Cake’ – ‘An Anarchist’s Cookbook’
Channel: ramblinactivist
Date: 2021-04-01

Avoiding the mass-marketing & manufacturing systems that play upon our obligatory festivals to sell over-priced, sickly-sweet cakes

(Ramblinactivist 2021/8, Sap Moon 2021)

An imminent birthday means I need a cake for the obligatory celebration. Do I: (a) Buy; or, (b) Bake – a cake? For me, though, there is no choice!

The systems of food marketing and manufacturing play upon these obligatory festivals in order to sell over-priced, over-engineered, sickly-sweet cakes that give you a sugar rush; while the psychoactive alkaloids of the cocao – the caffeine and theobromine – mess with your brain chemistry and metabolism to give you a mildly blissed-out feeling.

Any food that messes with brain chemistry always has an exploitative, value-added cost penalty – which when it comes to cake I refuse to pay.

This post started with a rant about vegan chocolate cake. Someone posted a photo of their wondrous new acquisition – a vegan cake in a box with a prominent “Reduced: Was £6.00; NOW £2.52” sticker on the front. I was not impressed.

Vegan cake is SO easy to make. I am amazed that anyone would think any mass-market cake was a bargain at all.