Babycakes! An adventure in dairy free baking.

My youngest has been diagnosed with an allergy to cows milk, which is fairly common but has made the already challenging journey of parenthood even more so. It also means that he hasn't been able to taste any of my baking apart from my bread, as pretty much everything contains butter when it comes to baking. 

But I have recently been introduced to soya margarine, which has opened up new doors in dairy free baking. So I thought I'd try out a dairy free cake, complete with buttercream (or is it margarine cream) and fondant icing. 

Here is the recipe I used. It's pretty similar to your usual sponge recipe, except replacing the butter with margarine:

Cake:

Using two 20cm (at its widest point) heart shaped tins

225g caster sugar

225g soya margarine (we used the Pure brand)

225g self raising flour

1/2 tsp baking powder (possibly unnecessary with self raising flour already there but I was playing it safe)

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Strawberry jam to fill

Buttercream:

275g soya margarine

375g icing sugar

A few drops of vanilla extract

To decorate:

500g fondant icing

Food colouring of choice

I used the creaming method with the margarine and sugar, then beat in the eggs and vanilla extract. The flour and baking powder were then folded in and the mixture was split between the two cake tins and baked at 180 degrees (fan) for 25 minutes. 

The cake itself was delicious and it has still not gone stale a week later. I'm not sure if this is to do with the margarine or the airtight quality of the box I am keeping it in though!

The buttercream was also pretty tasty, although its qualities were different to if it had been made with butter. As margarine is meant to be spreadable it didn't set when I had crumb coated the cake (this is how I have learnt is the easiest way to cover a sponge cake in icing: cover the cake in a thin layer of buttercream to seal in the crumbs, then put the cake in the fridge for the buttercream to set. Then add another layer of buttercream and use this to flatten the top of the cake and create sharper edges. Let this set in the fridge again and then cover with fondant) so I had to put it in the freezer. Even then it didn't set completely. So the sides of the cake looked very messy as I hadn't been able to get completely straight edges. I have yet to discover a way around this. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to comment!

As for my decorations, I was visiting my best friends for the day and I decided to model the cake on their babies who are the same age as mine. I need to practise bodies again I think!