Hi All,
I am new to cake decorating. I just made my first carved cake. I used what I thought would be a durable chocolate cake, but it wasn't, and it began to sag 
I looked under the durable recipes here, and they all, (with the exception of one white cake), have dairy ingredients. Does anyone have a flavorful, perhaps chocolate, durable NON-DAIRY cake recipe for carving and/or maintain integrity under fondant? Thank you so much in advance.
I think one will be ok for carving cos its a fairly dense cake (just super moist lol) 
and its dairy free
http://cakecentral.com/recipe/wacky-cake-2
The Wacky Cake is very nice, but somewhat soft. You can take most cake recipes and substitute for dairy ingredients. Such as margarine instead of butter, or another liquid instead of milk (soy milk, coffee, juice, or water, etc). Also, there are excellent vegan products found in most stores, even in supermarkets. So if there are any recommended recipes you know will work, try making a substitution.
I bake most of my recipes non-milk ( I do use butter) for lactose intolerant people in my family. I substitute rice milk for milk in all recipes ( I prefer it over the taste of soy milk) and I use non-dairy sour cream and cream cheese in cake recipes all the time. They come out great.
Dairy-free does not mean "egg-free" - milk comes from mammals not birds.
Chocolate cake
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted DF "butter", softened *
1 3/4 cups packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/3 cups water
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 9- by 2-inch round cake pan and dust with flour, knocking out excess.
Whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.
Beat together butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition, then beat in vanilla.
Add flour mixture and water alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour and mixing just until combined.
Pour batter into cake pan and bake in middle of oven until springy to the touch and a tester inserted in center comes out clean, 55 minutes to 1 hour. Cool in pan 1 hour. Invert onto a rack, then turn right side up and dust with confectioners sugar.
* Dairy-Free "Butter"= Earth Balance or nuttelex
Just wanted to chime in here, as a lot of my baking is dairy-free. I have had great success using rice milk instead of dairy milk in cakes and cupcakes (although I find that soy tends to give better results, I prefer not to use it, because a lot of people with dairy protein allergies or intolerances can have the same reaction to soy protein). I use dairy-free margarine, usually Becel or Earth Balance instead of butter, also with great success.
Depending on the reason that you're baking dairy-free, be careful with margarine and "non-dairy" creamers - they OFTEN have "whey" as an ingredient, which is a milk protein. Read the label!
I don't know if this will help but I have in the past made a chocolate cake with soy milk & margarine instead of butter and it has worked out ok. if you were doing a tall carved cake you may need to use dowels to stabilize it a little.
Although this thread is a bit old I wanted to pipe up in case anyone else comes to the thread looking for an answer regarding diary-free baking.
I have better success with my cakes (and other recipes) using Almond milk as opposed to rice. I find rice milk very watery versus almond.
I am in Canada and here were have a variety of brands of almond milk. I've tested about 4 of them and the closest one my kids like to regular milk is made by Silk and it's the True Almond, unsweetened vanilla flavour. A *tiny* bit sweeter than regular milk, but my kids love it and when baking it substitutes 1:1 perfectly!
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