An Icy Tale

My daughter had a birthday party to attend today - and I had promised her double chocolate cake to take with her. We always make little cupcakes and decorate them for special occasions like this, since she is unable to share the birthday cake her friends have due to her (very) restricted diet.

Our current favourite chocolate cake mixture is this one:-

Although this is equally good. 

I also make my own by just substituting the ingredients in a regular sponge recipe, or cake pops like these but today, after a two hour dance class (during which time I had to wait for her) whilst flying solo following my husband's glaucoma surgery being inventive was just not going to cut it.

So we had these:-

With added cocoa nibs, and they just needed icing.

Having checked online first I ordered some two colour swirls vanilla and chocolate icing to decorate a chocolate cupcake. But checking again I saw that the icing had whey powder in! Back to the drawing board.... with half an hour to go. I spotted the Renshaw naturals icing and quickly make an "Elsa" face to go on top - must have been divine intervention as it turned out there was in fact a "Frozen" theme at the party!

This is not in any way a sponsored post - I'm sure the swirly icing tastes delicious but PLEASE Lakeland, make an effort on your online site! If you are selling food items you have a responsibility to list the ingredients. Food Allergies are no joke.

Here's the result - which I was very pleased with!

Cakes!

This is a general post about cakes, the birthday cake post I wrote some time ago is still valid, in so much as it works well, and the cake is still available. Tesco's chocolate version is even more yummy though!

It comes ready iced too, always a bonus! All our family love this moist, chocolatey cake.

There are lots of options now, it is definitely getting easier to find cake alternatives or ingredient alternatives. My children love decorating their own cakes and biscuits with icing pens too.


If you prefer a dry mix, I have tried two recently. The Hale and Hearty mix on the right (which is good but I prefer their brownie mix for taste)
and the Glebe Farm Mix which is fool proof, works every time and I would love to know why it is so much better than my own efforts when the ingredients are pretty much the same!

My friend Suzanne at "Free From for Kids" has a reliable stock of the Hale and Hearty mix, sometimes found in Sainsbury's and the Glebe Farm one is increasingly available at local outlets like farm shops etc. They make a blueberry muffin mix, carrot cake mix and pizza base mix which I have recently bought to try. Muffins were very successful!

Of course, you can use a regular sponge cake recipe (4oz/100g of flour, same of marge, same of caster sugar with 2 eggs) and substitute everything for free from ingredients which I do very successfully pretty frequently. Works fine with muffins and if you can tolerate banana they help with the rising for beautifully tall cupcakes and muffins.

There are lots of variations on this theme on the "Sweet Treats" page. There is a fantastic chart for alternatives to egg in cakes here too.

Happy Baking! 

Orange Syrup Cake

Wheat free, gluten free, dairy free, soya free, and corn free

Makes one large cake in an 8" round tin, or a sandwich cake in 2 tins - approx 12 slices or kill two birds with one stone as I did, and make a 6" cake and 10 small cupcakes for the freezer!

Ingredients

175g (6oz) "Pure" Sunflower Margarine or equiv. alternative
225g (6oz) caster sugar
2 medium eggs, beaten
200g (7oz) rice flour
3 oz ground almonds (optional)
1 tsp Xantham Gum
1 tsp baking powder
grated zest and juice of one large orange

Beat together sugar and margarine. Add in beaten eggs and stir in dry ingredients.
The mixture should be a soft dropping consistency.

Bake in the oven for 40 minutes at 180C (15-20 mins for cupcakes)

Ideas for serving:-

Heat 200mls orange juice and 5 oz caster sugar to create a syrup and pour over the top.

If you made 2 cakes for a sandwich then spread marmalade in between the layers.

Make butter icing (equal parts icing sugar to margarine) with a little orange juice (you might need more icing sugar) and either spread over the top of the large cake, or make butterfly cupcakes. to do this, cut a cone shape out of the top, fill with icing and cut the cone shape piece in half to form two "wings" which you place back on the top.