birthdays !!

[nikkie]

:) hi im new to this dairy free web site my son who is now 8 months has a milk and lactose intolerance, at the moment things are ok as im finding alot more shopping stores are now really taking notice that not all babies can eat the sames things. The problem that i do have is that i really would love him to have a cake on his 1st birthday that would be dairy free but im not having much luck with finding anything i could give him:unsure: ? so any help on this matter would help a great deal thanks x:)

[Steve]

Hi Nikkie,

What i normally do is make cakes following normal cake recipes just substitue any dairy ingreedients with dairy free alternatives. They normally turn out fine, although i find that sponge cakes don't seem to rise as much as when using dairy.

If you need help on this, please feel free to contact me either on the forum, Private Messages or E-Mail.

Steve

[Pam]

Nikkie

You're going to find yourself in the kitchen more and more cooking things from scratch. It is no longer possible to go out and buy the first cake on the shelf that looks good. Most shop birthday cakes contain butter cream containing milk and shop fruit cakes (eg M&S) contain butter. I have 3 children but only one is dairy free. To ensure that she doesn't miss out I make all their cakes myself just substituting butter with dairy free marge (eg Pure) and I decorate them with either ready to roll icing (which is dairy free) or make butter cream using dairy free marge, a little soya milk and icing sugar. I'm not particularly artistic so we don't exactly get a professional finish but they are usually happy with the end result.

Kinnerton used to do a free from chocolate cake, sold in Sainsburys but I think they stopped doing it because it didn't sell well enough. A few supermarkets now do individual cake bars etc in their free from range but I don't remember seeing anything larger. Your other alternative would be to ask a cake maker/decorater to do you a special cake, but you would need to be absolutely sure that they understood your needs.

You've got a few months to practice your baking before the big day, I'm sure you'll manage to make one, but at the end of the day, a one year old probably won't know if he is eating birthday cake or not so if the worst comes to the worst you could buy a cake but give him something different when the others are eating their cake.

[Lindsay B]

Tesco - also do a dairy free chocolate cake - it takes 30 mins to make - find it in their dairy free section. It tastes fab.

[nikkie]

:) Hi again thanks you so much for all your replys, im going to spend some time in the kitchen near his birthday learning to cook and bake dairy free its a great weight lifted when you can chat to other people living with dairy free eating thanks again x