Vegan baking: Tips on ditching the dairy from leading London baker Ms Cupcake

Thousands of people have given up dairy and animal-related products in recent months, with a growing number taking part in month-long pledges such as Veganuary. IBTimes UK spoke with the founder of Ms Cupcake, London's first all-vegan bakery, to get tips and tricks for ditching dairy from your diet.

Ms Cupcake, aka Mellissa Morgan, started baking dairy-free cakes in 2011 after making the transition from vegetarian to vegan.

"When we first opened, people didn't really know what vegan was, yet alone what vegan was in a cake. We had to do a lot of education, letting people try the cakes to see it is not funny, it doesn't taste weird, you're not going to miss the egg out of the cake," said Morgan.

'Find alternatives'

Morgan said: "Cutting dairy out is actually a lot easier than people think. Nowadays, every shop is going to have soy milk available to you, you'll be able to grab a coffee on the go, and things are getting even better. Massive supermarkets are creating amazing free-from sections, and sourcing products from all over the world."

The vegan society say there are over 150,000 vegans living in the UK at the moment.

However, with New Year's Resolutions, and projects like Veganuary, which challenges people to stay dairy-free for the month of January, that number is expected to rise in 2016. Morgan, who made the transition to veganism in 2011, has plenty of advice for newcomers.

"There's a lot of substitutions, and I think that's what a lot of people do initially when they start. They might go 'I'll try this vegan cheese', or 'I'll try this vegan fake meat'. And then as you start to get comfortable with that, that's when you can start to slip outside your comfort zone a little bit and try things you've never tried before".

"There's loads of vegan ice cream available, lots of massive chains of pizza places offer vegan cheese as an option, so it is really rare nowadays that I will walk in somewhere and not be able to go there," she added.

Ms Cupcake opened in 2011, and has since expanded into selling vegan cookery books and teaching classes on how to bake dairy-free.