5 Steps to Sustainable Cake
Having my birthday this past week got me thinking: how can I make my birthday cake more sustainable? In this post, I give you my top 5 tips for baking cake sustainably.
Make it vegan
Butter, milk and eggs are usually three key ingredients in cakes. Unfortunately, butter and milk have a super high environmental footprint because they come from cows. Both free-range cattle and confined cattle operations commit major environmental no-nos.
Free-range cattle trample soils, eat grasses selectively and degrade waterways, while confined cattle cause massive land, water and air pollution and release methane. To decrease your cake’s "cow damage,” you can get creative with non-dairy fats (like coconut oil, vegetable oil and shortening) and non-dairy milks (like almond milk, soy milk and oat milk).
Although eggs have a smaller environmental footprint than milk or butter, chickens still contribute more to pollution and wasted resources than most plant-based ingredients. Many vegan cake recipes substitute eggs with applesauce, aquafaba, mashed banana or flax eggs. I recommend experimenting with a few different substitutes to find which works best for your tastes.
Incorporate local ingredients
Using locally milled flour, locally tapped maple syrup or locally grown fruits can cut down on the distance your ingredients have to travel to reach your table. The more “local” your food is, the fewer greenhouse gases will be released during its transportation. Buying local ingredients can also help you get to know local farmers and food producers, who can answer all your burning questions about food sustainability.
Go easy on the sugar
A 2019 study in the journal Sustainable Production and Consumption calculated the environmental impact of several types of cakes, including cheesecakes, pies, cupcakes and whole cakes. They found that of all the ingredients in cakes, sugar was the ingredient with the second-highest environmental footprint (right after dairy) in terms of land use and human toxicity.
Sugar's huge footprint comes as no surprise, as sugarcane farming is known to contribute to pollution, industrial waste and soil erosion. To decrease the harmful effects of these ag operations, you can opt for different sources of sweetness, like honey or maple syrup. Alternatively, you could reduce the amount of granulated sugar in your cake.
Bakers at King Arthur Flour found that in most recipes, reducing the sugar by 10% actually produces a better structure than the original recipe, while writers at Food52 argue that granulated sugar can be reduced by about 30% without negatively effecting the final cake. I recommend running a few experiments to find your ideal amount of sugar. First, cut the sugar by 10-15%, then, reduce the sugar a little more each bake until you find your cake recipe’s sweet spot.
Know your servings
We've all been there: you bake a massive cake for a 6-person party, but by the end of the night, 3/4 of the cake is left uneaten. Inevitably, you'll nibble on the cake for a few days before throwing half of it into the garbage. It's tempting to go all-out on special occasion cakes, but making too much cake can create a ton of waste. All this wasted cake will get buried in a landfill, where it will release methane, one of the top contributors to climate change.
If you're only serving five people, you don't need to whip out your 9- by 13-inch pan. Usually, a 4-inch tall, 4-inch square cake will serve eight people. For every 2-inches added in diameter, the cake will serve four more people. This means that a typical 8-inch square pan will serve a whopping 20 people (or about 12 people with a substantial amount of leftovers). If you want more details about cake serving sizes, Wilton has a v thorough guide to cake servings.
Store in reusable containers
If you have leftover cake, don't reach for paper plates and plastic wrap. Plastic waste is a huge problem in our world, with microplastics polluting almost every inch of the globe. Even paper plates create unnecessary waste, which means wasted energy, wasted resources and increased pollution. Instead of using paper or plastic storage, store the cake in a lidded reusable glass container. Glass containers are sustainable since glass can basically last forever, and, if it ever breaks, you can super easily recycle it.