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Dairy-Free Frosted Birthday Cake

January 16, 2012

I love having a reason to bake a cake. I don’t bake cakes as an after-school treat (cookies rule!), as we just don’t want that much of a tempting sweet around unless it’s easy to parcel out and freeze. But for birthdays, I’m all about baking a cake!

This weekend we celebrated several January birthdays in our family, and I was tasked with bringing a pareve, or non-dairy, cake. My mom keeps a kosher home, and she and my dad were serving deli for our lunch gathering, so I had to find recipes without butter and milk.

The night before our event, I baked two rounds of Black Chocolate Cake, using dark cocoa powder and Earth Balance butter sticks for the shortening. It was gorgeous and moist — truly more black than dark brown.

Since buttercream frosting wasn’t an option, I decided to try my hand at White Meringue Frosting. Egg whites are whisked with lots of sugar and a little vanilla extra over a double-boiler, until the eggs reach a temperature of 160°F and all the sugar is dissolved. Although the recipe cautions about thoroughly dissolving the sugar to avoid a grainy end product, I wasn’t totally successful. I did whisk that mixture by hand, on the stove, for 20 minutes though! The cooked mixture felt and tasted smooth to me, but once it was whipped in the KitchenAid the graininess became more pronounced. Regardless, the frosting was tasty and my father-in-law actually thought the sugar granules were an on-purpose, delicious feature. A. did not — upon tasting it, he immediately asked why there were “crumbs” in the frosting.

The cake was a big success, and I am sure I can do a better job on the frosting next time. If you need a non-dairy frosted cake for allergy or kashrut reasons, I can definitely recommend this one. And here’s the evidence:

Filed under: Dessert

Tags: bake, Black Chocolate Cake, Earth Balance, eggs, recipe, White Meringue Frosting