Failure cakes and their redemption.

My niece Miss E has a bunch of allergies. Some have gone away as she's gotten older, and some are probably there for life, which is fairly sucky. Mostly it's not the end of the world, but it does mean that she can't have most cakes or biscuits. If I was a 3 year old girl, I'd be pretty disappointed if I couldn't have a piece of cake when it was my friend's birthday. Miss E's mum keeps a bunch of muffiny-cakey things in the freezer for situations just like that, but it's not the same when you get one thing while everyone else gets something different (and slathered in icing).

A while ago I decided to see if I could find a cupcake recipe, with icing, that was a passable substitute for the real thing. I found a website with rave reviews about the egg and dairy free cupcakes so I thought it was a good place to start. I even read the author's tips for making sure the cakes weren't too dense, which is a problem when you can't use egg as a binder.

I'm going to assume that things don't necessarily translate from US to Australian, even when I switch my scales to crazy US measurements. This was the result:



Not cool. Thank goodness for cupcake papers, or I think that the tins would have had to go in the bin. This recipe has so much sugar that the cake edges caramelised and stuck firmly to the tin.

I pressed on and made the icing anyway. It had that slightly weird flavour that Nuttelex has, but it was surprisingly good overall. I iced the least crappy cakes and sent them to school with M, who offered them to his colleagues without telling them they were egg and dairy free. Apparently they were fairly well received.

I put off experimenting with the recipe for a while, mostly so we could have cupcakes that we could eat without hacking them out of the tin. Then my sister asked me if I would make Miss E-appropriate cupcakes for the party that my mum was hosting for my sister's birthday. The plan was that all the food at the party would be ok for Miss E to eat.

Out came the mixer, and I decided to start with the same recipe, but without so much rising agent (SR flour, but no extra baking powder, for those of you that care...). My thinking was that maybe the cakes had risen nicely, but then sunk because there was nothing to support the cake structure. The scientician in me had to experiment, and it turned out, I was right. Check this out:


(also, I got a wanky photo app on my phone...)

Pretty pleased with that. It was too far away from the party for this to be the final batch, so I iced them and my boys thought they were pretty good - but honestly, if it's cake shaped, they'll eat it. They were slightly dense (the cakes, not the kids), but entirely passable in terms of flavour. It also meant that I had to try to replicate the outcome - yay for the scientific method!

The second batch worked just as well as the first, so that was lucky. I emailed my sister to find out what color icing she wanted... The "committee", consisting, one suspects, entirely of Miss E, voted for pink. What a surprise! A bit of pink sparkle dust, and some 'dusty rose' food coloring, and this was the result:



Not bad, huh?

And Miss E certainly seemed pleased!



Credit where credit's due: the recipe is from Sweet Rosie

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