Dairy free, egg free Chocolate fudge birthday cake with marshmallow frosting

 Seven months ago if you'd asked me for a dairy free, egg free chocolate cake I'd have looked at you like you were asking for the moon on a stick. And here's todays post - dairy free, egg free chocolate cake. Oh the learning curve we're on. It's a good one too - densely chocolatey, with a fudgey consistency that's not too ooey gooey (technical term), topped with sweet, creamy marshmallow frosting and hundreds and thousands of hundreds and thousands. What more could any husband want.

However, I do feel that this post should come with a caveat. With a letter from my Mum. It's not proper baking. Not the way I do it. Please meet - the boxed cake mix...


Oh Betty Crocker, you don't know how much I wanted this not to work. But it did. And beautifully. And you know what - as much as a year ago, I'd have (silently) judged a blog post purely about cake mix - I get it now. I've always believed in inclusivity - for years my Guides had soya milk in their cakes, bakes and scrambled eggs because we had a girl with lactose intolerance. Similarly we are a completely nut free unit as I have three with nut allergies. I've never made anyone's additional needs the crux of who they are - just ensured they're included in everything by making appropriate adjustments that ensure they don't stand out. And for us these cake mixes do just that.

So, here's my 'recipe' for Chocolate fudge birthday cake with marshmallow frosting 
(serves 16)


1 box Betty Crocker Devil's food cake mix
1 can/ 300ml(ish) Cherry coke

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees
Grease and line 2, 8 inch sandwich tins

Empty the cake mix into a big mixing bowl, and pour in the coke. Using electric beaters or a hand whisk, mix until smooth (three minutes using my electric beaters)
Split the batter between the tins and bake in the preheated oven for 28 minutes

Remove from oven, allow to cool in the tins and then turn out onto a wire rack. These are really light cakes so do be careful or the layers will tear.

Marshmallow frosting

200g marshmallows - check the packet to make sure they're dairy free. Ours were from Sainsburys
3-4 tablespoons of rasperry jam - seived so there's no pips (or use a seedless one)
4 tablespoons of almond milk

Tip all three ingredients in a pan, and pop over a low heat. Stir constantly as the marshmallows melt until you have a smooth mixture.
Remove from heat and allow to cool, stirring occaisionlly.
When cold, spoon about a third in between the cake layers, and pour the rest over the top of the cake - this isn't a frosting you want to be epically tidy - part of the gloriousness is that it's quite casual.
Top with hundreds and thousands of hundreds and thousands.

Enjoy your dairy free, egg free birthday cake.

Up on Friday - an Apple and sweet mixed spice 'Wacky cake' - also dairy free and egg free

Fancy s'more cake?

It feels like forever since I actually blogged about cake - which is ridiculous as it's essentially what I set this blog up to do. Mind you, times have changed quite considerably since those days in our old flat and the baby takes up a lot of my cake baking time. Takes it up beautifully however.

Back in July in was M's birthday. Happens every year. Every year something comes up that stops me making him a cake on time. You'd think the same happened this year - Harry was a month old, we were 2 weeks out of NICU, and yet somehow I managed to make his cake. Go me. Also, go sleep deprivation.

Inspired by s'mores, one of our favourite things, this chocolate cake with marshmallow frosting was a quick bake. I actually used (in the name of experimentation) coconut oil in the place of butter as we'd run out. I feel like I should say, in response to all those posts on Pinterest that say 'you can't taste the difference' you can totally taste the coconut. Or at least I can.

S'mores cake

3oz self raising flour
1oz cocoa powder
4oz butter (or coconut oil)
4oz caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the frosting

4oz marshmallows
2tbsp milk
2 egg whites
1oz caster sugar

Beat butter & sugar until light and fluffy
Seive flour and cocoa powder together
Add vanilla extract and eggs slowly to mix. Add a spoonful of flour with each egg
Fold in the rest of the flour/ cocoa
Divide mixture equally between 2 greased and lined 6 inch sandwich tins (I used 8 inch and ended up with a rather flat cake)
Bake in the centre of the oven for 25 - 30 minutes
Cool on a wire rack

Frosting

Melt the marshallows and milk together in a pan over a low heat
Leave to cool
Beat the egg whites and sugar until you get to stiff peaks
Fold the egg whites into the marshmallow and leave to set

Split the frosting between filling the centre of the cake, and using a pallette knife smooth over the sides and top

Decorate the top as you wish - I used sparkly silver stars

Also, isn't my new cake plate beautiful? I'm completely in an Emma Bridgewater phase and this is personalised for our wedding - see

If you've liked this post and would like to read more of my baking adventures - interspersed with new baby posts and meal plans. Then please look to your right and follow me on Bloglovin, Facebook Twitter Pinterest or Instagram

Vegan brownies (and a distinctly un-vegan chocolate icing)

Courgette isn't necessarily the worlds most natural companion to chocolate brownies, yet somehow a fortnight ago - given 2 giant courgettes - I decided that yes it was. Or would be. or something. A long time back (2007!) I made chocolate courgette cake which according to my notes went down very well with the office. However I had no abiding memory of the dish whatsoever which clearly meant that this latest glut of courgettes meant a new recipe was required. 

I often flit around with vegan cookery, and am good at making recipes dairy free (we had a guide who was dairy free for 4 years, and for a few years in the past I seemed to be unable to tolerate dairy products either - I still struggle, but not in the some way) However I truly struggle with vegan baking - it's the missing eggs I think. I was delighted to find a recipe that not only utilised a large quantity of courgettes, but was also vegan. 

This was based around a couple of recipes I found online - and I have to say it still feels most unnatural to bake without eggs, but the brownies were fabulous; dense, gooey, and surprisingly sturdy (which is always a bonus for packed lunches). 

I found these made 16 squares

125ml vegetable oil
300g caster sugar
2 tsps vanilla
250g plain flour
40g cocoa powder 
1.5 tsps bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
250g grated courgette
60g hazelnuts - I didn't chop these up, but you could - or substitute them for another nut, or leave them out altogether

Preheat the oven to 180 and grease and line a brownie pan - mine's about 20cm square

Grate your courgettes - I use the food processor and then wring out the excess water by popping them in the middle of a clean tea towel and wringing them out over the sink. Then set aside

Sift your dry ingredients together until well combined
Beat the oil and sugar together and add the vanilla
Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mix well
Fold through the courgettes and add the hazelnuts

Bake for 30 minutes until the top feels set and the cake has a bit of resistance when you press on it

These kept for just over a week in an airtight tin. Great for packed lunches, or as an afterschool snack, or if you're me with that precious cup of tea that you have on walking in the door from a long day at work. 

Here ends the vegan part of the recipe.  I had planned to use the chocolate icing I use for Nigella's chocolate cake for the brokenhearted - recipe here - but forgot.

Icing/ Frosting

6 tablespoons cocoa powder
60g butter
4 tablespoons milk
200g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
35g extra light Philadelphia

Melt the butter in a pan with the cocoa powder
While that's cooling down, beat together the milk, icing sugar and vanilla extract
Stir in the cooled down melted butter, beat in
Add the Philadelphia and continue to beat until smooth and glossy

Spread on top of the brownies and if you forgot to make your boyfriend a birthday cake, add sprinkles and candles

The icing would be epic on fairy cakes and M's colleagues happily ate the secret ingredient brownies. Another winner

Popping out for Valentines: Easy chocolate cake pops

Or what to do with leftover cake. I know, I know, who actually has leftover cake at any point in their life? But (and I blame the new medication) for some reason the cakes I made for M for Valentine's day, produced lots of offcuts as it were, and I had no desire to cram them into my mouth. Odd.

In lieu of gluttony, I remembered speaking to Michelle and Sarah at Let's Make Christmas (I would like to insert a little dance at me actually networking. My CBT counsellor would be so proud) about making cake pops with the Guides. And I thought, well this is clearly a perfect opportunity to have a go. There was a brief flurry of Googling, at dismay at the amount of blogposts dedicated to using cake mixes when twitter stepped in to save the day. I only really wanted proportions of buttercream to cake crumbs as when I had that straight in my head I wouldn't need a recipe per se.

Thankfully Kate of Cake Poppins stepped in to save the day with a suggested ratio of 2/3 cake crumbs, to 1/3 buttercream.

The cake recipe I had leftovers from is here, but any sponge recipe would do, and similarly if you're looking for an activity to do with Brownies or Guides, they could quite happily crumb economy cake from any of the big supermarkets and this would reduce the cost per head (and the time) quite considerably. I should also mention that I halved the cake I had left and have made 12 cake pops, the rest of the cake crumbs are happily in tupperware in the freezer awaiting another day.

This is the buttercream recipe I normally use (you can scale quantities up or down as necessary). I actually used leftover buttercream from the Valentines cakes as I had some in the fridge still.

125g butter, softened
500-750g icing sugar
75ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract (this recipe of mine is so old that says essence!)

Put the butter in a mixing bowl, add about half the sugar and the milk and vanilla.
Using an electric mixer beat until smooth and creamy (about 5 minutes) If you don't want the worktop and you to get dusty from the icing sugar then cover the bowl with a slightly damp teatowel
Taste and add the remaining sugar until its of a spreadable consistency
Colour if you want and substitute some of the icing sugar for cocoa or melted chocolate for chocolate buttercream.

Once your buttercream is made up, Mix it, spoon by spoon into the cake crumbs. you want a texture that binds together, not dissimilar to when you make truffles. Use about a teaspoon or two to make a ball shape, and once holding together nicely, insert a lolly stick (not all the way through). I asked my local Starbucks for some stirrers and they kindly let me take a handful. I know that in the Guide hut we have a stash of lolly sticks that we use for craft and these would work perfectly. Ours are donated from an ex Guiders boyfriend, but equally you could buy them from Hobbycraft or similar. I'm sure Baker Ross sell them.

Melt chocolate - anything you want, milk, white, dark, and dip the pops in so that they're coated nicely, leave to set. Sarah and Michelle gave me a fantastic tip here - use egg boxes, or florist's oasis to hold the pop sticks up nice and straight. Then you can either, roll in glitter, decorate with sprinkles, or drizzle on more chocolate.

Now the chocolate melting stage was where I hit an issue. I only had half a chocolate santa left in the house, I contemplated going out and getting some chocolate but I feel slightly odd today (odd in a precursor to a seizure way, rather than just usual oddness) so raided the cupboards to find half a jar of Sainsburys (not so) new Popping candy chocolate spread. Just the thing! I put two tablespoons in with the melted chocolate, let the heat from the bowl let it down so that it would coat the pops, and went ahead.

So easy, such wow potential. Cake Pops for Valentines. With leftover cake. What more could you ask for?