Your Veganesse, fine vegan desserts!

Spotlight:
Red Velvet Cake
Strawberry Cake

As a vegan cake-ologist (new word^^), I check my notes against the conventional cake counterparts out there.  I want vegan cakes to surpass the egg-toting, non-vegan sugar-containing, and animal-derived cakes out there... So I research:

In my search for red velvet cakes, I found out that it was created during Depression times in the US.  Sugar, among other things, was being rationed, so resourceful bakers took to using sweet beets to help out in their cakes.  The red was more of a pretty side effect, but easily colored the cakes with the majority of the flavor being vanilla with just a bit of chocolate.  The beets do not impart a detectable flavor to the cake, just lots of moistness.  And voila! Red Velvet became a Great Depression success story. 
Today, it seems to have gone downhill.  Red Velvet today does not use natural beets.  Instead, it has become commonplace to use 1 to 2 entire bottles of red food dye per cake (eek!).  Red food dye (an FD&C) is one those products that have indistinguishable sources-- a lot times it will contain the extract of crushed conchineal beetles (aka. conchineal extract, carmine) which an increasing number of people are allergic to.  Be wary of products/ingredients that you cannot tell where they come from. 

Another cake that shocked me is Strawberry Cake.  Now this cake sounds wonderful actually, like a perfect accompaniment to Farmer's Market.  When I think of strawberry cake, I think real strawberries and batter.  Nearly every listed cake I found contained artificially flavored/colored gelatin powder (meat-derived) ::GASP!:: and generic white cake mix.  What happened to the strawberries?  This makes "strawberry" cake far off the meter of what should be considered as food.

A step back: We have made many advancements in medical treatments, yet food has become heavily processed and full of unrecognizable ingredients.  Good health and a proper lifespan can never be achieved this way.  I know I mentioned just two cakes, but I am not over-generalizing.

 Now I love dessert and dessert excites me, but the common practices for these two cakes should have them thrown out the window.