Dairy-Free Easter Cake

Hello all!

And I hope your Easter weekend was fantastic! I wanted to share with you a cake I made to celebrate with friends that tastes divine. And best of all, it's dairy-free.

Yes, all of you who are doubting me, you can make a dairy free cake that's still moist and delicious and have no milk in it (save of course some nut milk).

Here's my recipe and ingredient list:

Dairy Free Easter Bunny Cake
Makes 1 8inch cake round.

Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups (300g) all purpose flour *
1 tsp (5ml) baking powder *
1 pinch of salt
1/2 cup (113g) vegan butter (1 stick or 8 tablespoons)
1 cup (198g) sugar
1 teaspoon (5ml) vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup (119ml to 178ml) almond, soy, or rice milk (I used a Coconut Almond milk blend by Califa)

* Note: If you're in the mountains (7500ft), reduce baking powder to about 3/4 teaspoon and add another 1/4 cup flour. Also, use 3/4 to 1 cup milk until batter looks like it's not too thick but not runny.

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325F (165C). If in the mountains like me, preheat to 335F (170C).
Grease and flour your 8 inch round cake pan. Set aside.
Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a separate bowl. Set aside.
In a large bowl, beat butter then add sugar. Beat together for roughly 4 minutes or until light and creamed.
Add the vanilla and beat until combined.
Then add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each one.
Alternating, add 1/3 of the flour mixture, mix well, then add 1/3 of the milk. Repeat until all is added, mixing well.
Pour batter into your prepared pan.
Bake in oven about 50 minutes (I did 45 minutes) or until a toothpick, cake tester, straw piece inserted into middle comes out clean.
Allow cake to cool about 10 minutes in the pan before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling (I waited about 20 minutes).
Frost when completely cool.

All set?
Let's get started, shall we.

The usual suspects

Oh, before we do ANYTHING, grease and flour that pan! Then make sure to set your oven to preheat.

I used the vegan butter and flour to do this.

And I mean it should be pretty liberally greased.
When you're done it should look like this.

Okay, now we can start. Sift your flour, baking powder, and salt together. Set aside.

I love the look of sifted flour. Don't you?

Such fine texture!

Right, on we go. Pull out that mixer of yours, unless you have a hand mixer (I don't).
Beat your butter with your sugar. It's going to take a while, minimum 4 minutes of solid beating and scraping down the sides to beat again.

After 1 minute of "creaming"

After 2 minutes of "creaming"

After 3 minutes of "creaming"

Finally you hit 4 minutes and it's like the heavens opened up and allowed the "butter" to mix with the sugar.
I may or may not have danced for joy at that moment because now I could go on with the recipe.

Add your vanilla.

Beat it! Just beat it!

Add your first egg.

Whip it, now whip it good!

Add the second egg and do the same.

Okay, so we have the butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs. Onto the flour and coconut and almond milk.

For this part you're dividing your flour and "milk" into thirds, alternating between the two and mixing well after each addition.

Flour

Mix

Milk.

Once everything is incorporated and you've scraped things down from the sides, you can stop. It should look like a light yellow batter.

Um...excuse the mess. I forgot to put the guard back on and a puff of flour may or may not have come out.

Remember that pan of yours that you greased and floured?
Now grab it.

Pour your sunshiny goodness in a bowl into that pan.

Spread it out and we're ready for the oven which by now should be pre-heated.

Bake for 45 minutes. Check for doneness by inserting a cake tester or a knife or a piece of straw (not from a dirty broom) into the center. It's done if it comes out clean. Allow to cool in pan until barely warm and then flip it out onto a rack.
Use your Matrix movie skills.

Smells so good.

Allow to cool COMPLETELY! It should be cool to the touch.
Then stuff it in the freezer for at least 1 hour; it'll make the frosting part of the cake MUCH easier.

I used this recipe, here, for my frosting. It's vegan and I love that it had apple cider vinegar and almond extract in it.

Okay. Once that frosting is made and then put into the fridge for at least 10 minutes to firm up again, take that cake out of the freezer.

Slice it in half, like so.

Then you're going to put the two flat sides together with some frosting. If you do it the other way, the bunny will look more like a straight stick figure bunny which is fine too, if that's the look you want.

Okay, with a sharp knife, cut at an angle a little piece out. 

And see those toothpicks? You're going to stick them into the piece you cut out and attach at the other end for a tail. 

I didn't yet in the photo because I wanted to show you where that piece would be going. 

Also...I had to trim some more off from the front and attach it to make the bunny's tail look less like a square and more like a tail.

Now you can decorate to your heart's content. I frosted it and then literally threw unsweetened shredded coconut all over the cake. The eyes are dark chocolate eggs I cut in half. And the nose is a Swedish Fish jelly bean.

The ears I printed out from the internet.  And then I dyed some sweetened coconut with green food coloring for grass.
Voila!
Easter Bunny cake that's to die for!

Hope you enjoyed!

Until next time,
Bisous!