Vegan cupcakes take over Toronto

The annual special presentation at the Toronto Vegetarian Food Festival often happens at the tail-end of the festivities. This year, “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over Toronto” involved five of Toronto’s top vegan bakeries going head-to-head in a Cupcake Wars-style battle to answer the question: Who makes Toronto’s best vegan cupcake?

Hosted by the enthusiastic Victoria Moran and judged by dynamic duo Terry Hope Romero and Isa Chandra Moskowitz as well as Justin of YouTube sensation Vegan Meal Time and Barbi of the Toronto Vegetarian Association, this was one amazing showdown.

Each bakery had to come up with two different cupcakes for this two-round battle. The first on presentation challenged them to represent a Toronto neighbourhood using cupcakes. Chai-spiced cupcakes with peacock decor made by Sweets from the Earth represented Little India, and a beach scene of cupcakes made by Tori’s Bakeshop represented the Beaches.

Kaitlyn of Kupcakes Bakeshop explained her concept of her Casa Loma scene of cupcakes and Kelly of Bloomer’s Bakery told the story of her inspiration of the four seasons of High Park.

Lastly, Lesia of LPK’s Culinary Groove, who has a reputation for going above and beyond to win over the crowd in local bakeoffs, represented her own ‘hood, Riverside. As you can see in the photos, she built her entire neighbourhood and decorated cupcakes for each of the major businesses along Queen Street East!

Those who live in Toronto will appreciate the cuteness of the photo below, which perfectly illustrates the landmark businesses on the corner of Queen and Broadview: Jilly’s and Dangerous Dan’s!

Between the array of flavours, textures and presentations, it ended up being a tough competition–all of the entries were pretty incredible. Tori’s and LPK’s each won a category and LPK’s won best overall.

With so many incredible vegan bakeries, I’m pretty lucky to live in this city. Don’t you think?

Now that this epic event has passed for another year, I’d like to thank all of the volunteers who helped make the Toronto Vegetarian Food Festival an amazing experience for the thousands of attendees and speakers. The TVA team, Luke, David and Barbi deserve a great deal of gratitude for filling every waking second over the past few weeks with festival logistics and creative solutions.

Thanks also to the amazing speakers who bring their stories and experiences to share with the enthusiastic crowds. It was a special treat to see Terry Hope Romero, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, Victoria Moran, Doug McNish and Colleen Patrick Goudreau, among many others.