Now, I’m not saying I expect people to carry vegan treats to my front door as an act of solidarity with my V-card project (although I wouldn’t say no – PM me for my address). However, I also wasn’t prepared for the levels of torture I’d face from my inner circle of friends.

One person decided an appropriate reaction to me coming out as a vegan would be to spam me with texts listing all my favourite things falling into the non-vegan category: “No more gözleme for you!”, “What about peshwari naan?!”, “NO. MORE. ICE. CREAM.”

Another one went on the offensive with close-ups of the cheese on her Franco Manca sourdough pizza, followed by snaps of butter, milk, and egg in the process of being transformed into a cake. I mean, Snapchat’s potential for the distribution of dirty pics is no news, but this was taking food porn into whole new realms of hard-core masochism. What was that about a friend in need being a friend in deed?

Instead of going into self-pity mode and munching my way through kale, the increasingly militant vegan in me decided to strike back. With a simple counter-offensive strategy of culinary exploration (read: an excuse to eat), I set off to show that the holy trinity of pizza, ice cream, and baking are all well within the reach of a vegan.

“Having to utter the notorious vegan words of ‘can you leave off the cheese’ didn’t come easy, and I may have even gone through a period of anticipatory mourning”

I’d like to say I went to war sure of success, but I was starting to doubt myself already with Mission Pizza. I know that the authentic Neapolitan pizza experience is all about hitting the magic thinness and crispiness of the crust, but as much as I like to pretend to be a die-hard foodie, sometimes I just need to ditch the orthodoxy and engage in my pagan ways. I confess, I like my pizzas just as I like my music: the cheesier the better. So no, having to utter the notorious vegan words of ‘can you leave off the cheese’ didn’t come easy, and I may have even gone through a period of anticipatory mourning.

The age of miracles isn’t over, though. To my total surprise, the cheese-worshipper in me was converted to the heresy of mozzarella-less pizza with every bite. The trick is to do some mental maths and pick either a Margherita – your culinary ‘tabula rasa’ as it were) – or the option with the greatest number of the toppings you’d choose anyway, leaving out the non-vegan stuff, and then get creative. The extra toppings section on a pizza menu is the vegan’s happy place: caramelised onions, roasted peppers, mushrooms, a dash of rocket for that sophisticated look… Unleash your inner culinary genius, et prego, you have reclaimed the world of pizzas. Not convinced? It gets better: Zizzi’s offer vegan cheese, and – take a deep breath – Papa John’s BBQ sauce is vegan. Hello happier cows and beautiful pizzas.

No pizza indulgence is complete without ice cream, though. At this point of my counter-strike, my confidence was returning: if cheese can be veganised, then what couldn’t? (And to be fair, the powers of veganising should be obvious to anyone from the mere existence of minor miracles such as tofurkeys.)

As with cheese, I’d always believed in clotted cream and other full-on dairy goodness as essential components of the perfect ice cream experience. Very conveniently, though, it turns out you don’t need dairy to make something taste like dairy. If I hadn’t known better, I would have bet a decent chunk of my student budget on Swedish Glace – a soya-based ice cream alternative in different flavours – being a full-on cow-based soft scoop. And there’s more to explore beyond the Don’t Taste The Difference from the dairy range: a personal favourite is COYO’s frozen coconut concoction, with tamarind and dates thrown in for a slightly-more-exotic-than-vanilla flavour. A final blow in the Mission Ice Cream comes in form of good news from the US (yes, that does still exist): Ben & Jerry’s have released a dairy-free range, spanning options from Chunky Monkey to Chocolate Fudge Brownie. When they hit the UK shores, my life will be complete.

That said, my life is already closer to completion after my final mission, the no butter, no milk, no eggs baking experiment. A little Googling will bring you closer to earning a degree in fine handy vegan hacks, if not quite fine cuisine. Replacing milk is a piece of cake, with even Sainsbury’s offering a wide range of nut milks, while the butter in any recipe is tackled by vegan margarine or plant oils. With eggs, things get a bit more interesting: depending on what purpose the eggs are serving in the recipe, you can take your pick from an impressive range of substitutes, from apple sauce and mashed banana to flax or chia seeds, instant mashed potato, and tofu, as well as a variety of store-bought egg replacers made of who knows what.

The V Card: The lunch

Equipped with this knowledge, I embarked on Mission Carrot Cake. Apple sauce fitted well with the general vegetable theme of the cake, and coconut oil brought a little nuttiness to the overall flavour. The real challenge, though, was the cream cheese frosting. I could have opted for ready-made vegan cream cheeses, but instead I increased the stakes and went via the proper DIY route. I’d like to be able to say this involved Bake Off-standard technical skills, but I got away with working some blender magic on soaked cashew and macadamia nuts, almond milk, coconut oil, lemon juice, and vanilla extract – et voilà, a few minutes later, I was spreading a surprisingly cream cheese like substance onto my cruelty-free carrot cake.

All that remained was to snap a Snap to declare the war won, and victory mine. Oh, and to nurture my food baby – not too bad a battle scar