Dairy-free Birthday Cake

Dairy-free, Soya-free

Serves: Dozens

Photo courtesy of my friend Mel

This weekend it was my daughter's third birthday. I wanted to make her an epic birthday cake for her little party. She loves the film Wreck it Ralph, so after getting some inspiration and ideas from Pinterest, and watching the movie literally dozens of times, I knew the cake I wanted to make. As well as baking, decorating cakes is a little bit of a hobby of mine. I'm gradually teaching myself the skills.

Anyway, the bulk of this two-tiered cake is not dairy/soya-free. It's a full-blown buttery chocolately monstrosity! Ha ha. Nor is the chocolate drizzle I added. But as one of the children coming to the party is allergic to dairy and soya I decided to make the smaller top-tier dairy/soya-free. So this recipe is only for one 20cm lemon, fondant cake. The bottom tier is a 30cm cake, so if you wanted to make this exact cake to the recipe you would need the ingredients listed below, plus another two times as much for the bottom tier.

I should just add that this recipe is not really mine. It's a standard fondant cake madeira recipe with the addition of lemon juice and zest. You could make the cake vanilla, orange, almond, etc by changing the flavouring. But for a fondant cake you generally need to use a strong cake recipe, such as a madeira, so it can take the weight you're adding to it.

Ingredients:

(for one 20cm round cake. For the full cake add another two times these amounts)

Cake:

• 280g non-dairy, non-soya spread
• 280g caster sugar
• 5 eggs (beaten)
• 280g self-raising flour
• the zest and juice of 2 1/2 lemons

Buttercream:

• 220g non-dairy, non-soya spread
• 700g icing sugar
• 2-4 tbsp lemon juice

Plus:

• about 900g standard fondant icing
• food colouring paste of the colour you want the cake
• various sweets, lollipops and any other embellishments you want to add

Method:

Cake:

• Preheat the oven to 180C, Gas Mark 4. Grease and line two 20cm sandwich tines.
• Place the spread and sugar into a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer until pale and creamy.
• Gradually beat in the eggs, adding a tablespoon of flour with each egg to prevent curdling. Stir in the lemon juice and zest.
• Sift the flour into the bowl and fold in using a large spoon.
• Divide the mix between the sandwich tins and smooth the tops. Bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes. Check if they're cooked using a skewer or by pressing the top and seeing if it springs back.
• Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.
• (Just a tip for anyone who decides to make the 30cm cake too. A cake that size will need to be baked in one deep tin, and will need about 2 hours to cook. When it comes to cutting the cake across to make the separate sandwiches, it's much easier if you first freeze the cake and cut while it's still partically frozen. I always freeze fondant cakes before using them).

Buttercream:

• Place the spread in a large bowl and beat until light and fluffy.
• Add the icing sugar a little at a time and beat using an electric whisk. Continue to mix until the mixture changes colour.
• Add enough lemon juice to make the mixture a spreadable consistency.
• Spread over the cooled cake and between the layers, smoothing out with a palette knife.

To finish:

• Finishing a fondant cake takes practice and the right tools. If you've never done it before I highly recommend checking out some YouTube videos to get some tips. It's a lot harder than it looks (trust me). Colouring the amount of fondant needed on this cake also took a lot of time.