I need a kickass egg/dairy-free birthday cake recipe... can't have another vegan cake failure, please help!

[eskimomama]

Hello

My DD is turning 2 in a couple weeks and I'm going to make a birthday cake that she can eat - so it has to be dairy/egg/almond/hazelnut free...

I've spent the last few months throwing away cakes that didn't work out - vegan cakes can be awfully oily, flat and well, inedible after 2 bites...(sorry don't want to offend any vegan here).

I would be very grateful for a really good recipes that will please both DD and her granddad!

Thanks in advance

I make a regular sponge and use 25g/1oz of silken tofu in place of eggs and pure spread instead of butter.

so I use

3oz silken tofu
6oz pure
6oz castersugar
6oz self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

Mix the sugar and pure until light and fluffy, mash the tofu and then mix into the butter pure mix, beat until well mixed and fluffy, sieve flour and bp into the wet mix and mix well. Pout into cake tines and bake for 15-20mins

Always come out light and fluffy with a delicious taste.

Try this one here

Or do what I do - cheat and buy one - eg from here and get a cake topper for the top (ask for vanilla frosting if you're doing this, as a white backing is better than a chocolate one).

Pamplemousse - what size/type tins do you use, and what temp oven please?

I make this eggless chocolate cake. It is very moist and lovely. It freezes well cut up into slices to makes a quick microwavable impromptu pudding for children/adults too.

I make it with gluten free flour (but you can do it with normal flour as per recipe) so it is an eggless and flourless cake. Yes it really is possible to make a cake without eggs or flour - which is jolly useful to know when my vegan friend comes round and I can't eat flour or dairy.

great - will try tomorrow!
lukewarmmama - I live in France (the land of amazing cakes, but also of eggs & dairy in everything), so unfortunately that won't work!

Why don't you forget about cake and do something like a decorated birthday jelly in a facy mould? That's what a friend of mine does for her similarly food-intolerant DD.

A fancy mould, obviously......

It bakes at 170 in a fan oven and I split the mix between 2 greased and floured seven inch tins.

Thanks, I'm a bit clueless with cakes!

PS another idea is to use a muffin recipe to make lots of muffins or small fairy cakes, and then stand them in a cake tree, iced/decorated as you want. Muffins are soooo easy egg/dairy free - just soya milk instead of regular, and 45-60ml extra milk instead of the egg.

This recipe was in our local paper last week as an extract from fiona cairns new birthday cake book. No idea how good it is, but I was saving it in case I needed a df/ef cake

140ml sunflower oil
360g sr flour
60g cocoa powder
2tsp baking powder
1tsp salt
400g caster sugar
2tsp vanilla extract
4 tsp white wine vinegar

170c/gm 3 1/2 oven two 23cm round tins, greased and lined

Mix dry ingredients together, and all wet except vinegar together in a jug. Combine the two, then add vinegar at the last minute.
Pour into tins and bake for 30-35 minutes

She suggests sandwiching with raspberries, but I'd make a choc buttercream with Pure, then sandwich with raspberry jam and buttercream, then ice the top

The cake crusader do non dairy no egg cakes which are also nut free, I am useless at baking so this is much easier for me!

thanks so much everyone!

This one for for Mocha Squares is my favourite. You could decorate the icing with edibile sparkles.

sounds really nice and healthy too GraceK, thanks for the suggestion. Not sure DD will like the coffee taste of the icing too much though, what other icing flavour would you suggest with it?

The choc brownie recipe on this site is amazing.....the most delicious I have ever found ;) it is egg and dairy free

If you search on the recipe finder on here and enter egg and dairy free there is a really good chocolate brownie recipe which is essentially cocoa powder, flour, sugar, soya milk and a little veg oil (crucially - a little - because I agree that most vegan cakes are v oily).

If you have no joy I can write it out for you.

I have made it many many times and given it to non-allergic children as well as my own and it always a winner.

For birthdays I ice it with icing sugar/water mix (usual basic icing - i forget its proper name!) and then go mad decorating it with dairy free choc buttons, hundreds and thousands, edible sparkles, glace cherries etc etc.

There is a recipe on here somewhere for yellow cake. I am useless at baking but did this for ds2 who was dairy and egg free. It was yummy and huge! I used dairy free spread to do icing.

Oops sorry just doubled checked to see if it was still there and it has egg in it. Remember now was supposed to introduce egg at one year but mil very kindly did it early for me. Without asking. Causing a heart attack. But as she always says I never believed any of that allergy stuff, none of mine had it and I was right .

We get egg replacer from the Gp you can also buy it the chidren at school wolf them down at tea and cakes the brand we have uses water and really so long as you had a flavor there is no differance can also use oat milk. Also makes pan cakes mini yorkshire pudding anything really

My failsafe is the lemon and poppyseed muffin recipe on the BBC website, I just replace the egg with egg replacer and use soya yoghurt and pure spread.

Both my dds are also dairy and egg allergic, with one also nut allergic so i can understand the nightmare of birthday parties! My best recipes for big cakes are giorgio locatelli's eggless chocolate cake (his daughter is also egg allergic and he's a fantastic chef, so it makes sense its good!) - it can be a bit dry so i fill/cover with vegan buttercream which is a mix of soya spread and veg shortening so it has a firmer texture. I can try and link to recipes if you need. otherwise the "Greens" devils food cake is devine, but maybe less like a birthday cake. Otherwise, as mentioned mini muffins/cupcakes always go down well.
Good luck!

I've just found the recipe that mamado mentioned;

450g flour
6 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
300g caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
300ml water
2 tbsp distilled white vinegar
125ml vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/gas mark 3. Put the wet ingredients in one bowl and sift the dry into another. Slowly add the wet to the dry, and beat: the consistency should be like runny honey. Pour into a greased cake tin (or tins) and bake for 20 minutes, until springy to the touch. Add any topping you like - chocolate icing always goes down well.

And this is the greens one you also mentioned;

1 cup hot water

½ cup cocoa powder

1 cup soymilk

½ cup maple syrup

½ cup rice bran oil

1 tablespoon champagne vinegar
1 tablespoon vanilla

1 cup cake flour

1 cup all purpose flour

½ cup maple sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1. In a large bowl, combine hot water and cocoa powder. Whisk until cocoa powder has dissolved
2. Add soymilk, maple syrup, rice bran oil, champagne vinegar, and vanilla, and whisk well.
3. In another bowl, sift dry ingredients and add to wet
4. Whisk dry and wet ingredients together until combined.
5. Pour batter into parchment-lined springform pans
6. Bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour, when cake feels springy and an inserted skewer comes out clean.
7. Let cool, de-pan, and chill in refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
8. Cut top off cake to even out, and cut into two layers to frost.

Frosting
4 ounces vegan butter

1 ¼ cup soymilk

1 cup organic powdered sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla

8 ounces vegan chocolate chips

1. In a heavy saucepan over medium-low heat, bring vegan butter, soymilk, powdered sugar, and vanilla to a simmer, whisking at all times so that soymilk does not burn on the bottom of the pot.
2. Remove from heat and add chocolate. Whisk until chocolate melts. Let cool until it is warm to the touch.
3. Place in a food processor, and let it run until the frosting is smooth and shiny
4. To assemble, place cake on a rack over a sheetpan. Spread 1/3 of the frosting in between the cake layers, pour remaining frosting over top layer, and let it pour over sides. Let it set in refrigerator or at room temperature before cutting.

I'm looking forward to trying these out before dd's birthday. Thanks mamado!

thanks chocaMum... I had no idea how to do links!

I highly recommend both esp the Greens recipe for a wow celebration pudding that just happens to tick the free from/vegan boxes! The locatelli one works really well filled with 'buttercream' and then covered with roll out icing, so can look like a shop bought birthday cake that all the other kids will be expecting!

hope you enjoy

My links don't normally work so I've just done good old copy and paste!

The other website which is very good is pig in the kitchen, the chefs daughter also has allergies and she just comes across as very lovely from her bloggs. I need to try the cake recipes myself but all the comments look very encouraging.

You need This book The squidgy chocolate cake on the front is delicious and incredibly easy to make (and actually turns out like the illustration) as are the other cakes in the book - we love the apple cake and coconut and cherry cake. Inspired buyhow well all the cakes turn out I am actually going to try the xmas cake from here this year! I can post a recipe if you like - what sort of cake are you looking for?

sorry "by" not "buy"

also, they just use conventional ingredients - nothing fancy or weird that you have to hunt high or low for and, no vinegar, which I always find leaves a funny after taste in your mouth