I have a request for a dairy free cake. Can I use a box cake or are there dairy derivatives in the mix that I need to worry about? I know there are a few people on here that have experience with dairy free cakes so I am hoping someone can help out......

Thanks,

tripletmom

i have a cake order to do too that has to be dairy free. and i don't know what to do... so i would like to know also on what should i do... what about butter-cream it has butter, isn't that dairy....please help me. my cake is not due for another 3 weeks...

I have done a cake for a child with a milk allergy before however there is a HUGE difference between intolerance and life-threatening. I my case it's an intolerance to dairy so for the 'buttercream' it's going to be 100% shortening in that one.

the mother said her son is allergic to mike product but that is not life threatening so it is a intolerance... so how much more of the shorting would it be in different of the butter or is their no different.... thank you for your help...

shaddi

Also another tip would be if recipe or frosting calls for milk.. you can use soymilk..lactose free

I don't know about mixes, but I do have a bunch of vegan scratch recipes if you can't find what you need in a mix.

I had this come up recently and all the major manufactures of cake mixes have dairy in the mix. There is a great vegan site that has milk free cake recipes you can make from scratch. If interested PM me and I'll share it. I'd look for it now, but have somewhere I need to be!!

http://vegweb.com/recipes/sweets/index-sweets-cake.shtml Has a lot of recipes. But also a lot of them are flops (even the 5 stared ones, I tried one the other day and it was a disaster.)

If you are going to try one of the recipes, check it over first to make sure everything looks good, and then be prepared to have to tweak it a lot to fit your tastes.

If it only needs to be dairy free, that's pretty easy. If it needs to be dairy and egg free it's a little harder, but not bad.

If you CAN use eggs, you have a few options. there are a few cake mixes that don't contain any dairy, but you have to be careful. One is Duncan Hines lemmon. Also there are cake mixes by the "organics" brand that don't contain any dairy either. If a recipe calles for butter, try using Earth Balance instead. For BC, I use 1/4 Earth Balance and 3/4 shortning. Or using all shortning would work too. Insead of milk use soymilk. PM me if you have any questions!

~Kelsie

I finally did look carefully at the label of BC and DH and both of their French Vanilla mixes have some sort of milk product, so those are out. I was then thinking I could use margarine in my icing as I have done that before however I also never looked closely at the labels. Once again there is something to do with milk in these margarines, including the soy one. That really surprised me. Mind you these were margarines found at the grocery store and not a specialty store like one that specializes in natural foods.

So back to the drawing board....and I will be defintely be sending a PM to you wendysue and waterfallsoygurl! Thanks for the offer!

Oh my heavens no, that's pure dairy!!! I can't even use butter flavouring as it is derived from butter. Scary isn't it?

We love to use Soy Garden. We find the earth balance a bit expensive. (soy garden comes out to be a little less in price than real butter in our area, especially if we get it on sale.)

But yeah, for normal supermarket margarines, it's difficult to find a truly vegan one.

http://www.cherrybrookkitchen.com/
They sell these cake mixes in Target stores.

Okay, I just got back from the grocery store and I think I found a mix that might fit the bill. It is President's Choice Organics Vanilla Cake Mix and the ingredients are: organic wheat flour, organic cane sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, organic vanilla powder, salt, carob bean gum. Is there anything there that I should be worried about?

I plan on using soy milk instead of real milk. Will this work?

that should work fine.

In fact, if you used something like vanilla or another flavored soymilk that could be even extra yummy.

Sounds perfect. If you run into any problems we're here to help!

I used the Silk soymilk Vanilla flavored last night and it added to the taste... YUMMMMMMM!

you guys have such great ideas... don't know what i would do with out this site and you guys in it....

shaddi

Okay, I have one word for my dairy free cake......phooey!!!

I used vanilla flavoured soymilk in place of the regular milk, and even added a tad more vanilla. The batter tasted a little unusual but I baked 'em up anyways. They rose very well and seemed okay. I just cut a little triangle out of the 8" to test it out.....my oh my, I'm quite disappointed. All I can taste is the soymilk. Now, I like soymilk and will drink almost any kind but for some reason the cake tastes like the soy milk you buy in China town, the one in the little drinking boxes? It's a very heavy soy taste.....I will eat it as I really don't mind it however for someone who is looking for that great 'same cake' taste, this isn't going to cut it.

So, back to the drawing board....guess I will have to try those scratch cakes sooner than I thought I would!

There is a soy-butter alternative that comes in sticks. I think its a pur margerine ,but it works great for cakes from what i've hear.

Here's a recipe that sounds ok:

White Vegan Cake

Ingredients:

1-1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup soy milk
2 tsp vanilla
Egg replacer equivalent to 1 egg, beaten

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a cake pan. In large bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Combine remaining ingredients, and add to flour mixture. Beat for 2 minutes. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out dry.

Another one:

VANILLA CAKE
(Serves

Heres a simple white cake recipe.

* 1/2 cup soft soy margarine
* 2-3/4 cups all-purpose white flour
* 2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons Ener-G Egg Replacer
* 1/4 cup water
* 3/4 cup soy milk
* 1/2 cup water
* 1-3/4 cups sugar
* 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Spray two round 8" x 1-2/3" pans with Pam, or lightly oil and flour. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Mix Egg Replacer and 1/4 cup water and set aside. Mix soy milk and 1/2 cup water, and set aside.

In large bowl of electric mixer, beat soy margarine until it is creamy, about a minute. Gradually add sugar until well creamed. Beat in vanilla. Add mixed dry ingredients and mixed soy milk/water alternately to creamed margarine, sugar, and vanilla, beating after each addition. Begin and end with flour mixture. (Add flour in 4 steps, liquids in three.) Add mixed Ener-G along with the third addition of liquid. Turn evenly into pans.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes, or until done (wooden pick inserted into cake comes out clean). Remove from oven and let cool on cake rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pans and let cool on rack until cold. Frost as desired.

Another:

Ingredients:

* 2 cups water
* 3/4 cup sunflower or other light oil
* 2 Tablespoons white vinegar
* 4 teaspoons vanilla
* 3-1/2 cups sifted flour (I sift twice for a springy cake)
* 2 cups sugar
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* vegetable cooking spray

Directions:
Preheat over to 350 deg F. Combine first 4 ingredients in a large bowl. Mix together last four ingredients in another bowl and sift together well.

Add the dry mixture to the liquid and mix well with either an electric mixer or by hand till all lumps are gone. Let stand 5 minutes.

Pour into a 13x9x2 baking pan coated with vegetable oil spray, or cupcake tins (fill 2/3 full). Do not bang air bubbles out of this cake.

Bake about 40 minutes or until a wooden pick comes out clean, the cake springs back, and tops are slightly golden.

Frost with your favorite icing.



Let me know if these recipes are any good. I haven't tried any of them ,but they sound ok as far as a vegan cake can go.

My daughter has a life-threatening milk/dairy allergy so I read labels like crazy.

Duncan Hines used to make several mixes without dairy but now use milk in all of them (as of a couple of months ago). The other major brands all contain milk. I still have a couple of the old dairy free mixes left that haven't expired yet, but don't know what I'm going to do once they run out.

As far as margarine, be careful, since most of them contain milk as well. Whey is a milk protein. The only margarine I have found to be dairy free is Fleishmans unsalted, the green package, which comes in tubs and sticks (most of the Fleishmans contain milk, too, you have to be really careful which one). It's labeled parve.

Also, in the bc icing, I just use 1/2 crisco, 1/2 fleishmans margarine and water instead of milk. I also use butter flavor (the Wilton one does not contain dairy, I called them to find out) and vanilla extract. It tastes good and crusts well.

Sorry I can't help more with the cake recipes, though.

Thank you so much projectqueen!!!

I have had to do some fast research over the last few days. Wow! A cousin's daughter has a life-threatening peanut allergy and we thought that was a challenge.

Thanks for the head's up on the Wilton butter flavour, I wasn't going to use it in case it did have the casein in it. I did re-try the organic cake mix with water and it turned out okay. Nothing like DH but what else can I do? I also tried to make a scratch cake using shortening in place of the butter and water in place of milk. The taste was good but the texture was really dry so I will try to tweak that recipe, perhaps add some apple sauce for moistness.

I'm also going to the grocery store to see if it carries the Fleishman's margarine you are talking about. Fingers crossed, I hope it does!

Everyone has been so helpful on this topic, thanks so much!

I don't have anything to add to this thread, at least in the way of hints or advice on this type of cake...but I would like to give a big THANK YOU to all of you for the great information and advice offered. I have yet to get an order for this type of cake, but I've been following this thread and saved it to my fav's, I know that when the time comes I'll be prepared!

One more thing I should mention about the DH cake mixes. DH only changed the recipe a couple of months ago so if you hunt in some of the out-of-the-way smaller grocery stores, you may still find some without dairy that have not yet expired. I have been a bit lucky with that (at 7-11 here in New York). The larger chain grocery stores all have new inventory because there is a greater turnover but since the cake mixes have quite a long shelf life you might luck out with small grocers without a great turnover. I know for a fact that their yellow and their devil's food did not used to contain dairy. A quick way to find out is check the bottom left corner of the box. There is a U in the corner and a D next to it if it has dairy. If you are lucky enough to find one with only a U, then it is without dairy. All the newer boxes are labeled UD. I called DH to give them a piece of my mind since there are so many children with these allergies nowadays and they said they had received tons of calls about it. Hopefully they will change back to the dairy-free recipe. (At least on 1 or 2 flavors, we can always doctor them).

Sorry this turned out so long but maybe it will help someone trying to decipher the milk allergy issue.

That is great information projectqueen! The first thing I did after reading your post was runto check my boxes of DH and BC and sure enough there was that U and D in the lower corner. That does make the searching a little easier.

I did manage to find the Fleishman's Lactose free margarine in the little tubs, no sticks were to be found. It's a start anyways.

I have a question for you...I know when my cousin found out her daughter is DEATHLY allergic to peanuts she had to completely change the foods she bought. She had to ensure that the products she purchased had in no way come into contact with peanuts at any point and time. Some products will actually put on the label that they are a peanut free facility, such as Dare and Chapman's (a Canadian company). Does this apply in the case of life threatening milk allergy? Am I making sense? I guess I am asking do you need to worry about the processing of a product for fear of cross contamination?

I just replied to your other post about the purple turning blue but I didn't realize at that time that you had used the tubs and not the sticks. I always use the sticks so I'm not sure if the soft margarine in the tubs affects the color at all. It might have more water content so maybe you would need a little less liquid as well.

As far as the allergies, I think the peanut is absolutely the worst one. In the US, they just changed the laws in January that companies have to list any of the 8 major food allergens (in simple terms) that are included in any of their products. This will help identify products more easily but the peanuts are hard because there could be peanut oil used and you would never know it unless they tell you on the package. At least with milk, it is fairly easily identifiable. Although I once let my daughter have a banana lollipop from a dispenser at the store and the only questionable ingredient was "artificial flavors". Well, it must have contained milk protein somewhere in those flavors since it caused a reaction. Fortunately she had only had a couple of licks when I realized it and took it away so it wasn't a terrible reaction. If she drank a glass of cow's milk it could kill her. She gets the respiratory reaction with wheezing, coughing, etc. and has trouble breathing. The cross-contamination doesn't seem to be that much of a threat in her case, the allergist just said we should keep her away from any products containing milk (milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, butter, etc.). I have become very good at reading labels!

Hopefully she will outgrow it. She is only 3 and I have heard of children outgrowing it up to age 7 or 8, so I'm praying. In the meantime, we have found several soy replacements which she can have. They make soy milk, soy cheese, soy ice cream, etc. And with the Fleishmans I can at least use it like butter in most cases.

Probably too much information, but you asked

Not at all! For something like this the more information the better! It's the lack of information that can lead to trouble.

I really appreciate all of your input on this one, it really does make a huge difference! I also hope your little girl does outgrow her allergy as well.

Thaks again projectqueen!