Vegan Body Building

The Strongest To­fu Tanks In Town at the 2012 Sus­tain­able Liv­ing Fes­ti­val, proud­ly pre­sent­ed by Up­roar and An­i­mal Lib­er­a­tion Vic­to­ria

UP­DATE: Thanks to ev­ery­one who came along and helped make the event such a huge suc­cess. Please vis­it our face­book gallery to view pho­tos from the event

Fea­tur­ing Mr Na­t­u­ral Uni­verse 2009 Bil­ly Sim­monds, cham­pi­on body­builder Joel Kirk­ilis, and gold-me­dal her­bi­vore heavy­weight Noah Han­ni­bal.

Host­ed by Tri­ple J’s Lind­say “The Doc­tor” Mc­Dou­gall.

Come along and watch our an­ti-beef bee­f­cakes smash stereo­types of the ve­g­an weak­ling and wow you with their pecs, packs and body-build­ing prowess!

FREE EVENT!

Vegan Bus Tours in Melbourne

Mel­bourne Ve­g­an Bus Tours are a great way for any­one new to ve­g­an­ism to be­come fa­miliar with where to shop, get the in­side scoop on what prod­ucts are ve­g­an at your lo­cal stores, eat fab­u­lous food and en­joy a fun day out with like-mind­ed peo­ple.

The next Ve­g­an Bus tour is on TBD.
                                                   

Please note the Sun­day Fe­bruary 26 Bus tour has been can­celled due to un­for­tu­nate un­forseen cir­cum­s­tances.                                                    

We will be an­nounc­ing the date of the next bus tour short­ly

Book­ings are Es­sen­tial

Cost: $60 per per­son. The tour in­cludes a val­ue packed ve­g­an show bag and lunch.

Email Tanya by Fri­day Feb 24 (or un­til seats sell out) – tanya@liv­ingve­g­an.com.au

Check out our pho­tos on face­book

The Sche­d­ule

The tour will kick off at An­i­mal Lib­er­a­tion Vic­to­ria’s Ur­ban An­i­mal Sanc­tuary in El­wood for com­pli­men­tary tea/cof­fee and to meet some of the beau­ti­ful                                                    

Rich Chocolate Coffee Cupcakes

Many peo­ple would as­sume that any­thing both ve­g­an AND gluten-free must be about as de­li­cious as card­board. Get ready for shock and awe, peo­ple, as we pre­sent a cup­cake recipe that will.. Blow. Your. Mind!

Cup­cake Mix:

1½ cups Self-Rais­ing Gluten-Free Flour (we used Laucke Easy Bak­ers Spe­cial White Gluten-Free flour, avai­l­able in the health sec­tion of many su­per­mar­kets)
1 cup Cas­tor Su­gar
3 ta­ble­spoons Veg­etable Oil
1 ta­ble­spoon Egg Sub­sti­tute (eg. No Egg) mixed with 3 ta­ble­spoons Wa­ter
½ cup Nut­telex (or other ve­g­an mar­garine)
                                                   

2 tea­spoons Vanil­la Ex­tract/Essence
¾ cup Soy Milk
½ cup Des­si­cat­ed Co­conut

Cho­co­late Cof­fee Ic­ing:

2½ cups Ic­ing Su­gar
¾ cup Nut­telex
3 tea­spoons Vanil­la Ex­tract/Essence
3 ta­ble­spoons hot Fair-trade Cof­fee
7 ta­ble­spoons Raw Ca­cao Pow­der OR 2 ta­ble­spoons Fair-trade Co­coa

SERVES: 20 cup­cakes  PREP: 30min  COOK­ING: 30min

Pre­pa­ra­tion

Pre­heat your oven to 180C.

Toast the co­conut in a fry pan over low heat, stir­ring reg­u­lar­ly un­til just gol­d­en.

Com­bine all in­gre­di­ents and mix us­ing an elec­tric mix­er un­til thor­ough­ly blend­ed and slight­ly fluf­fy.

Place cup­cake pa­pers in­to a cup­cake pan and drop a gener­ous, heaped ta­ble­spoon of mix­ture in­to each cup­cake pa­per so they are filled close to, but not quite to the top.

Bake in the oven for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 min­utes, or un­til gol­d­en and a skew­er comes out clean when poked in­to one of the cakes.

Al­low the cakes to cool for 15 min­utes and then trans­fer them to a wire rack and al­low to com­plete­ly cool be­fore ic­ing.

Ic­ing the Cup­cakes

Com­bine all of the ic­ing in­gre­di­ents in a bowl and beat with an elec­tric mix­er un­til the ic­ing is com­plete­ly blend­ed and looks shiny.

Fit a pip­ing bag with a wide star-shaped noz­zle and fill the bag with ic­ing.

In one mo­tion, pipe the ic­ing on­to a cup­cake, start­ing from the out­side spi­ral­ing in, and then pipe up and around, with an ex­tra squirt at the end to form a tip.

Store in an airtight con­tain­er un­til ready to en­joy.

Mis­ter Nice Guy Cup­cakes

If you don’t feel like mak­ing your own cup­cakes and you live in Mel­bourne, try Mis­ter Nice Guy Ve­g­an Cup­cakes. They have an as­tound­ing range of de­li­cious flavours and use on­ly or­gan­ic, fair-trade in­gre­di­ents. For more in­for­ma­tion you can read our ar­ti­cle about them or vis­it www.mis­ter­n­iceguy.com.au

Vegan Hawaii – Guide to Oahu

Trav­elling as a ve­g­an can be tricky at times, es­­pe­­cial­­ly when deal­ing with lan­guage bar­ri­ers, cul­­tu­r­al dif­fer­­ences and un­­known food in­­­gre­di­ents. To make things that lit­­tle bit eas­i­er for glo­be­trot­t­ing ve­g­ans we are pleased to pre­sent a se­ries of trav­el guides cov­­er­ing the ba­sics of get­t­ing good food around the world. Sasha James pre­sents the lat­est in our se­ries, the guide to ‘ono ve­g­an grinds’ (as the lo­cals re­fer to de­li­cious food) in Oahu, Hawaii

I fell in love with Hawaii on my first trip. There’s some­thing sooth­ing and re­lax­ing about it: the trop­i­cal vibes take my stress-o-me­tre down from ten to one in a mat­ter of min­utes. I love it.

Oahu is the most pop­u­lat­ed and com­mer­cial of the eight main is­lands (but don’t let this de­ter you), and is home to the fa­mous Waiki­ki beach. There’s a lot to see, so you’ll nev­er be bored or short of ad­ven­tures.

The Fab­u­lous Pho at Lov­ing Hut - Rice noo­dles, soy pro­tein, gluten and mush­rooms served with fresh basil and bean­sprouts

Most re­cent­ly, I went to Oahu on my first holi­day as a ve­g­an. I was excit­ed to go and see what I could find. As I re­searched, I dis­cov­ered Hap­py Cow, which gave me a list of places to eat. I al­so found some fun blogs de­tail­ing ve­g­an ad­ven­tures. Luck­i­ly, ‘ve­g­an’ is a word eas­i­ly un­der­s­tood in Oahu, and, for those who                                                    

don’t un­der­s­tand it, a love of read­ing la­bels and menus will hold you in good stead.

In Oahu there are two pure ve­g­an res­tau­rants, Lov­ing Hut (an eter­nal favou­rite around the globe), and the Peace Café which opened in May this year. Since th­ese are the on­ly pure­ly ve­g­an res­tau­rants, you will have to ask some ques­tions when eat­ing else­where; but in do­ing this you will un­cov­er the most de­li­cious sur­pris­es.

I went along with a bunch of non-ve­g­an friends on this trip, and the truth is I didn’t find it dif­fi­cult to eat with them, even though there is a meat and fish (dairy and eg­gs be­ing a hid­den in­gre­di­ent) eat­ing cul­ture in Oahu. An ex­am­ple of this is the tra­di­tio­n­al Lu­aus—which I didn’t par­ti­ci­pate in­—where they roast a pig in her en­tire­ty. This breaks my heart. And, on an ad­ven­ture through                                                    

Sasha at the top of the Di­a­mond Head look­out at sun­rise, an hour-long hike up a steep path­way!

Chi­na town, I saw a now-life­less sow be­ing wheeled through the streets. But whilst the Hawaiian cul­ture doesn’t em­brace a di­et of plant-based foods, en­cour­ag­ing­ly I found that they do                                                    

have many plant-based op­tions.

When I ar­rived in Hon­olu­lu, I went along Ala Moa­na Boul­e­vard to my favou­rite Mex­i­can res­tau­rant, Wa­hoo Fish Ta­cos, and, while you can tell from the name it isn’t ve­g­an, it has a de­li­cious black bean and rice sal­ad com­bo that you can make up from their ‘side­kicks’ menu. There is al­so a ve­g­an veg­gie bowl. I al­ways re­c­om­mend you ask them if their beans and veg­gies are cooked in but­ter; in this case they aren’t.

For break­fasts, I found my way up Kuhio Av­enue to Ruffage Na­t­u­ral Foods, which is al­so a su­per­mar­ket with loads of ve­g­an-friend­ly treats you can take back to your ho­tel room. My favou­rite cooked break­fast on this trip was a mind-blow­ing to­fu scram­ble. I al­so stocked up on Al­mond Breeze, which I can on­ly hope will one day be                                                    

Ho­tel room break­fasts!

avai­l­able in Aus­tralia. Al­mond milk is de­li­cious on peanut but­ter puffins’ ce­re­al and shredd­ed wheat. It’s al­so great with ba­na­na and peanut but­ter smoothies—a theme is be­gin­n­ing to de­vel­op!

The Ala Moa­na Cen­tre has loads of cheap ve­g­an op­tions. The Food­works su­per­mar­ket down­s­tairs has a sal­ad bar from which you can cre­ate a five-dol­lar sal­ad, with                                                    

rice, beans and gua­ca­mole. Vim and Vi­g­or on the ground floor has ve­g­an mu­su­bi, a warm sushi-like rice bite. Fi­nal­ly, there is the Crack Seed Cen­tre, where you can get the most amaz­ing pre­served fruit and nuts, a must for the cu­ri­ous ve­g­an.

Through­out the day you can catch com­muter bus­es that go around the is­land, and you can ran­dom­ly get off and walk along the beach­es. Fresh trop­i­cal fruit is avai­l­able ev­ery­where. I snacked on man­goes, pa­paya and pineap­ple slices through­out my trip. Ve­g­an smoothies and juices are as read­i­ly avai­l­able, so it’s not dif­fi­cult to get what you need.

For lunch­es, I found beans and rice, to­fu wraps and sand­wich­es. Down to Earth, a health food store with sev­er­al is­land lo­ca­tions has a deli on-site with loads of ve­g-                                                    

It's a hard life

-­an op­tions. Here I munched on ve­g­an bur­ri­tos and hot sand­wich­es. The sweets de­part­ment wasn’t too bad ei­ther: it was here that I dis­cov­ered dark cho­co­late coat­ed ca­cao nibs. There’s                                                    

al­so Gen­ki Sushi, which has a num­ber of ve­g­an op­tions, in­clud­ing sushi rice, veg­gie sushi, eda­mame, age­dashi to­fu (no boni­to flakes—spe­cial or­der), which are filling and de­li­cious.

In the ’burbs of Hon­olu­lu, there is Whole­foods Ka­ha­la, which has lots of ve­g­an quick bites, as well as ve­g­an make-up, and beau­ty prod­ucts ga­lore (I was in ve­g­an heav­en). Thanks to my friend La­gus­ta, I found Su­per Pho, the most amaz­ing pho noo­dle res­tau­rant ev­er! It was tricky to get to, but worth the trek. On another day, I caught a bus with one of my friends to Kailua, which is on the trade winds side of the is­land, to sneak on­to a pri­vate beach; and at The Source we found de­li­cious ve­g­an sand­wich­es.

In Waiki­ki at night there are a bunch of Ja­pa­nese                                                    

Taberu ko­to at Hale, and a close up of the de­li­cious Teriya­ki tem­peh with lo­tus root

hole-in-the-wall cafes, as well as my favou­rite Oahu res­tau­rant, Hale. Here the ve­g­an and the mac­ro­bi­ot­ic lifestyle col­lide. While it’s not ex­clu­sive­ly ve­g­an, most of                                                    

the dish­es are. I have to say that I ate there many times. I could rare­ly go past the teriya­ki tem­peh with lo­tus root, and the TLT (tem­peh, let­tuce and to­ma­to). Th­ese dish­es were like noth­ing I have ev­er eat­en be­fore, and all my friends were made to have din­n­er there. They loved it! On the dessert menu were brownies that melt­ed in your mouth, and the cho­co­late mousse … mmm, words can’t de­scribe how yum­my they were!

There are many other ve­g­an-friend­ly res­tau­rants, cafes and hole-in-the-walls to check out on the is­land, so make sure you stop by Hap­py Cow for the lat­est de­tails. I hope this snap­shot of Oahu makes your de­ci­sion for a ve­g­an trop­i­cal get­away easi­er to make. I know it won’t be the last time that I’ll be drink­ing from a co­conut on one of its gor­geous beach­es.

You May Not Be a Supermodel But You’ll Always Be a Role Model

Gla­m­orous mod­els and sport­ing stars are not the on­ly peo­ple with in­flu­ence; re­gard­less of whether we want to be, we are all role mod­els.

One of the best things about be­com­ing ve­g­an is the op­por­tu­ni­ty it gives you to ‘start over’ your eat­ing pat­terns and your ap­proach to life. Whether you de­clare your ve­g­an­ism to any­one who’ll lis­ten or you are a lit­tle qui­eter about it, the sim­ple act of choos­ing to be ve­g­an can have a great im­pact on all who come in con­tact with you.

Be­ing a good role mod­el re­quires an aware­ness of your ac­tions and com­ments. It means an­sw­er­ing genuine                                                    

ques­tions with hon­es­ty and pa­tience, help­ing res­tau­rants to cater for us and as­sist­ing health pro­fes­sio­n­als in their                                                    

un­der­s­tand­ing of ve­g­an­ism. It’s al­so about show­ing others that as con­sumers, we can and should al­ways strive for the eth­i­cal op­tions.

Ev­ery time we say “no thanks, I’m ve­g­an” when of­fered some­thing non ve­g­an we af­firm not on­ly our own choic­es, but it’s al­so a small op­por­tu­ni­ty to show others that eth­i­cal choic­es are not as hard as they may think; it is pos­si­ble to say no and still be hap­py. When those close to us seek to un­der­s­tand our choic­es, we have the chance to alle­vi­ate their con­cerns while invit­ing them in­to a broad­er dis­cus­sion about eth­i­cal mat­ters. Th­ese are ob­vi­ous ways we can have a pos­i­tive im­pact on peo­ple; but there is al­so a more sub­tle and pos­si­b­ly more pro­found way be­ing ve­g­an af­fects others; not by what we say, but by what we do.

Role mod­els come in all shapes and sizes.

Some­times we’re lucky and we have the great ex­pe­ri­ence of see­ing our choic­es have a ben­e­fi­cial im­pact on others but we don’t al­ways get to see such an ef­fect. Some­times, our im­pact is sub­tle and takes time; you may nev­er con­vert a hard core om­ni­vore rel­a­tive but by mak­ing the con­cept of not us­ing an­i­mals for food more fa­miliar and show­ing that it has a pos­i­tive rather than a neg­a­tive ef­fect on health you may                                                    

make it easi­er for one of their off spring to go veg­gie. You may not get a res­tau­rant to be­come ve­g­an but by calling ahead and lett­ing them know you would like to dine there, they have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op a good meal for you which can lead them to in­clude a per­ma­nent ve­g­an op­tion on their menu, which al­lows ev­ery other din­er to see this meal, this in turn could as­sist another per­son to have the re­al­iza­tion that ve­g­an­ism is a vi­able choice and if noth­ing else, it can mean that some­where, at some time, some­one will be eat­ing a ve­g­an meal be­cause they just hap­pened to dine at the same res­tau­rant you did. When we ask a doc­tor or chemist if some­thing is ve­g­an, we in­crease their knowl­edge of con­sumer’s con­cerns and ev­ery time you pleas­ant­ly ask if some­thing is ve­g­an and re­frain from buy­ing or con­sum­ing it if it’s not, we shift the un­der­s­tand­ing of con­sumer’s ex­pec­ta­tions.                                                    

Th­ese things are un­like­ly to have the im­me­di­ate re­sult of mass con­ver­sion, but all of our small in­ter­ac­tions and pos­i­tive ef­forts put to­gether over a pe­ri­od of time can have a great im­pact on chang­ing the gen­er­al per­cep­tions of ve­g­an­ism and to en­cour­age more peo­ple to make eth­i­cal choic­es.

Why do I know this to be true? When I was a young veg­e­tarian back in the ear­ly 1980s, all the bread in the su­per­mar­kets con­tained an­i­mal fat, when in a res­tau­rant ask­ing if pump­kin soup was veg­e­tarian I was told “it on­ly had a lit­tle bit of meat in it”, my doc­tor told my mother that she should just force feed me meat and the veg­e­tarian op­tion in res­tau­rants most­ly con­sist­ed of hot chips (no doubt cooked in an­i­mal fat) and sal­ad with lots of cheese in it. Th­ese re­al­ly are just a few ex­am­ples of                                                    

count­less frus­trat­ing ex­pe­ri­ences. Fast for­ward to now and we have a pletho­ra of ve­g­an op­tions at the su­per­mar­ket; ev­ery­thing from ve­g­an burg­ers, soymilk, sweets and even in my coas­tal su­per­mar­ket I can find ve­g­an cheese and our lit­tle milk bar sells ve­g­an bread, mar­garine and soymilk. Aus­tralia is blessed with a healthy amount of res­tau­rants that cater for ve­g­ans and even in main­stream res­tau­rants if there’s no ve­g­an op­tion on the menu, most are hap­py to whip up some­thing other than a sal­ad. I’ve on­ly ev­er had one doc­tor say some­thing neg­a­tive about be­ing ve­g­an in the last ten years and our chemist is al­ways hap­py to check in­gre­di­ents. Th­ese changes have on­ly oc­curred be­cause ve­g­ans have made the ef­fort to pos­i­tive­ly en­cour­age change by en­gag­ing the main­stream.

Just like a star­let, you may find the idea of be­ing a role mod­el a bit daunt­ing, but don’t de­s­pair; with a small amount of or­gani­za­tion you can over­come any pres­sure. I al­ways pre­empt is­sues when go­ing to non-ve­g­an friends’ hous­es or go­ing to main­stream res­tau­rants; chat with your friends about what you can bring over or suggest easy recipes and call ahead to res­tau­rants, or if it’s a spon­ta­neous meal go straight to the wait­er and ask to speak with the chef and be friend­ly! When others see that you are com­fort­able dis­cuss­ing op­tions, they un­der­s­tand that what might have seemed like a dif­fi­cult problem for them is re­al­ly easy to em­brace. Be­ing pos­i­tive, friend­ly and open is a small ef­fort for a con­sid­er­able gain.

We all know be­ing ve­g­an ben­e­fits an­i­mals, the en­vi­ron-                                                    

-­ment and our own bodies but it’s im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that as an in­di­vi­d­u­al ve­g­an you al­so have the abil­i­ty to show others that ve­g­an­ism is a ful­filling, healthy and easy op­tion with great va­ri­e­ty and many ben­e­fits.

Mister Nice Guy Vegan Cupcakes

We were very excit­ed to learn that Aus­tralia has                                                    

a new ve­g­an cup­cake en­ter­prise, Mis­ter Nice Guy. So we sat down with hus­band and wife own­ers Lu­cas and Deb for a se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion about all things cup­cake (of course it wasn’t a thin­ly veiled ex­cuse to sam­ple some of their de­li­cious new prod­ucts *cough cough*)

Can you tell us a lit­tle about your­selves and how you came to start up Mis­ter Nice Guy Cup­cakes?

Deb Ev­ery­one shows their love in dif­fer­ent ways; Lu­cas shows his when he bakes. The first week I met Lu­cas he made me an Up­side-Down Pineap­ple cake, a Straw­ber­ry Short­cake, Mex­i­can Corn­bread and Jam­bal­aya, I fell in love with him very quick­ly and ev­er since then he’s just kept feed­ing me.

Cup­cake mas­ter­minds Lu­cas and Deb

Lu­cas That’s right! That’s the way it’s done. I LOVE bak­ing and cook­ing. I’ve been bak­ing since I was about 11 years old. My fa­ther didn’t want me to have su­gar when I was a lit­tle kid be­cause they thought I had AD­HD (new studies show that lit­tle kids have lots of en­er­gy be­cause they are lit­tle kids). I end­ed up go-                                                    

-­ing to live with my great aunt Nan­cy when I was around 11 years old and I knew that she didn’t know about the rule of no su­gar, so when I came home from school I would open her cook books and start bak­ing cakes and whole trays of cookies my­self. It was heav­en on earth!

I nev­er stopped bak­ing and here I am now do­ing what I love to do. That’s why the cup­cakes are so good!

What’s the sto­ry be­hind your name, and shouldn’t it be Mis­ter and Mrs Nice guy?

Deb We al­ways had the idea of start­ing up a cup­cake busi­ness even­tu­al­ly; it was just a mat­ter of when. I’m a graph­ic de­sign­er and was giv­en a job de­sign­ing a shop sign for an old timey bar­ber which I de­cid­ed to name ‘Mis­ter Cuts’.The lo­go I cre­at­ed was a mous­tache and scis-                                                    

-­sors. I re­al­ly liked it and kept play­ing around with the colours and de­cid­ed not to use it for that job in the end, but kept it for my­self in­stead for some rea­son…

Mis­ter Cho­co­late cup­cakes

The next night we went to a                                                    

friend’s par­ty and Lu­cas made some ve­g­an cup­cakes, peo­ple there kept telling us that we should start our own busi­ness be­cause they were so de­li­cious, then when we went home and I worked on the lo­go again for Mis­ter Cuts – it just clicked that Mis­ter Nice Guy would be a per­fect name if we ev­er de­cid­ed to start our own busi­ness.

This was on­ly three months ago. It was re­al­ly weird be­cause things just start­ed falling in­to place and lit­er­al­ly within a few weeks, we had the name, the flavours and the style in mind and Mis­ter Nice Guy Cup­cakes was born.

As for the Mrs Nice Guy- I want­ed to be Ma­dame Awe­some at one stage but it didn’t have the same ring to it as Mis­ter Nice Guy. Maybe one day I’ll bring out some Ma­dame Awe­some Cookies or some­thing and kick Lu-                                                    

-­cas’s butt.

One of the great things about your cup­cakes, aside from the fact that they taste amaz­ing, is that you go to great lengths to en­sure that all your in­gre­di­ents are ve­g­an and eth­i­cal­ly sourced. Was it dif­fi­cult to cre­ate a range of eth­i­cal and de­li­cious cup­cakes, and if so what are some of the chal­lenges you faced?

Lu­cas The biggest chal­lenge was to find out how ve­g­an bak­ing works. I’ve al­ways baked but learn­ing how to bake ve­g­an meant learn­ing how to bake all over again. It took sev­er­al months, but once I fig­ured that out- it was just a mat­ter of what kind of flours and su­gars worked best and tast­ed best- in the end it was al­ways or­gan­ic. Luck­i­ly, we live in Mel­bourne where there are so many ve­g­ans and                                                    

Yes please.

cru­el­ty-free stores, it gave us im­me­di­ate ac­cess to what we                                                    

need­ed, and thanks to this we dis­cov­ered that there are a lot of in­gre­di­ents in our cup­cakes that are good for you, like co­conut oil and Hi­malayan salt and Raw Ca­cao pow­der. Plus Mel­bourne has a great ve­g­an com­mu­ni­ty and we sensed that there was a need for ve­g­an cup­cakes and we felt we had to do it.

Another chal­lenge that I’ve faced is that I have come across peo­ple say­ing that some food items have been or­gan­ic but on­ly be­cause of mon­ey and not be­cause they are ac­tu­al­ly or­gan­ic. So that is on the top of our list of things to sort out. Deb and I are ac­tivists in many dif­fer­ent ar­eas and if some­one is go­ing around cer­ti­fy­ing food items as be­ing or­gan­ic and from sus­tain­able sources we are go­ing to hold them to it and find out whether they are or not.

Fresh off the pro­duc­tion line

You have a large range of cup­cakes on of­fer, rang­ing from tra­di­tio­n­al favou­rites like the cho­co­late and vanil­la, to slight­ly less tra­di­tio­n­al of­fer­ings such as the fuzzy ewok, red hot rid­ing hood, and zom­bie brains. what                                                    

are a few of your favou­rites and why?

Lu­cas I love the Peanut But­ter Cup as well as the Lazy Way Lane cup­cake. I used to sell co­conuts to tourists on Lazy Way Lane in Key West Flori­da, it was a great lit­tle hus­tle I had be­cause the co­conuts were free and the tourists had to walk by me to get to the shops!

So I would just sit there and sell them $5 cold and $3 warm, and for a few dol­lars more when they came back through I would cut them open and make a spoon out of the husk so they could eat the co­conut in­side. That was an awe­some job and the tourists loved it!

Deb Fuzzy Ewok is my favou­rite, I want­ed so bad­ly to name one of them Ewok, I kept sneak­i­ly throw­ing it in there. Then we dis­cov­ered the best Vegie Burg­ers at a                                                    

café called Em­pire Strikes Back Café who now stock our cup­cakes, so the name Fuzzy Ewok is stay­ing for good.

Al­so, the Zom­bie Brain Cup­cake rocks! Lu­cas frosts it in a way that it looks like a brain… mmm … de­li­cious!

What sort of re­ac­tions have you had so far, from both ve­g­ans and non ve­g­ans?

Lu­cas Our first frost­ing was way too sweet. So I looked in­to a very old fashioned frost­ing recipe that us­es 75 pre­cent less su­gar and us­es flour in­stead. The re­sult was an amaz­ing­ly creamy and not too sweet frost­ing that ev­ery­one loves! I’m so grate­ful for feed­back from our cus­tomers be­cause it re­al­ly can in­flu­ence things for the bet­ter.

I’ve al­so heard peo­ple tell me that they laughed when they heard we were go­ing to be selling ve­g­an cup­cakes and said it would nev­er work. Then they said that peo­ple were com­ing in­to the café all week­end ask­ing about our                                                    

cup­cakes and that they had tons of busi­ness be­cause they were selling our cup­cakes in their café! So yeah it sur­pris­es non-ve­g­ans how great our cup­cakes ac­tu­al­ly taste and that’s what we’re try­ing to do – change that whole pre­con­cep­tion of ve­g­an food.

You’ve had stalls at a few fes­ti­vals and more and more cafes are start­ing to stock your cup­cakes. How can peo­ple find you if they want to try some of your cup­cake good­ness?

Deb They can vis­it the café’s we sup­p­ly which can be found on the in­fo tab on our face­book page, other­wise con­tact us di­rect, we de­liv­er for free within Mel­bourne CBD and the sur­round­ing area, plus we love to meet our cus­tomer’s face to face.

Orange cho­co­late cup­cake

What’s next for Mis­ter Nice Guy, are you plan­n­ing to take over the world, or at least Aus­tralia?

Deb We’d re­al­ly like to get our own bak­ery shop go­ing,                                                    

so that peo­ple can come in and hang out and eat cup­cakes all day, watch a movie or play some old school Nin­ten­do games. The whole point is to make peo­ple feel nos­tal­g­ic and make it a place where ev­ery­one is wel­come.

We’d love to see our cus­tomers and friends ev­ery day and a shop front would be great way to do that. Al­so if we were in a good lo­ca­tion we could get non-ve­g­an strays in off the street who just want to eat a cup­cake and won’t even re­al­ize it’s ve­g­an – and hope­ful­ly they’d start feel­ing more and more com­fort­able with ve­g­an food.

For all your or­gan­ic, fair trade, ve­g­an cup­cake needs check out the Mis­ter Nice Guy Cup­cakes web­site, or vis­it the Mis­ter Nice Guy face­book.