This week is a cake I made for a young boy celebrating his 8th birthday. The initial brief was for a replica of the cake on the cover of Marshmello’s Light It Up single. As we discussed it, though, their’s son’s love for Minecraft came up and I was asked to incorporate the TNT, and then some other Minecraft elements. It evolved into the original cake pixelated into the Minecraft style.

To compliment the cake I 3D modelled and printed a Minecraft cake topper. I’ve since made them available to purchase on my Etsy store. So if you need one customised for yourself or a loved one, pick it up here.

Inside the cake was a little different. It needed to be not only a rainbow banana cake, but dairy free and low sugar. It’s a request I get often enough when catering for young birthday parties due to an idea that all the sugary foods send the kids a little hyper. [A little science trivia for you: it’s the excitement of the event that sends the little ones so loopy. Both sugar and food colouring have no effect on hyperactive behaviour!] It’s also steeped in concern for maintaining a healthier diet at a young age, too.

The issue when it comes to baking is that sugar is an important part of the leavening process in dry flour mixes. Simply cutting out the sugar can make for one flat cake! Combining that with dairy-free is a challenge, but one I’m used to. So for this one I adjusted my favourite vegan cake recipe to get the right results.

[SKIP TO THE RECIPE]

To make it work, I reduced the sugar by half and replaced the usual white sugar with raw sugar. I added in a couple of ripe mashed bananas and increased the amount of flour slightly to improve the leavening.

For the buttercream I used a combination of a plant-based butter and copha, similar to what Americans call vegetable shortening. It’s a popular butter substitute in buttercream, both as a stabiliser and often times as a cost-cutting substitute. I usually avoid it for that reason, but having a need to use it made stacking this cake a breeze. It sets really well at room temperature and doesn’t succumb to heat the way butter does.

It’s also really easy to get a crisp coating under the fondant with it.

Usually this is where I’d cover the cake but I decided to do it a bit different. I cut teeny little squares of fondant in all the colours I needed. To get the pattern I used a program I normally use for cross stitch patterns but the same principle applied here. I simply measured the cake as a canvas, chose the resolution and let it do the work.

I thought this would be a quick little process, but this took several hours. I spent most of the afternoon cutting the squares, then into the early hours of the morning applying them to the cake.

As was originally requested I made a bunch of the Minecraft TNTs to adorn the top of the cake alongside the custom cake topper.

The end result was something much different to the starting idea, but very unique to the birthday boy. He and his mum were thrilled, and that made all those hours worth it.

Here’s the recipe for the not just dairy-free but also incidentally vegan rainbow cake.

Do note that if you are going to make this for a strict vegan recipient to be careful about the food colouring. Red food colouring in particular is often contains carmine, a product that is derived from the cochineal insect. Carmine is perfectly “natural” and may still be found in brands that declare their food colouring to be so, so don’t assume “natural” means plant-derived. Some vegans don’t avoid products from animals without a central nervous system, and others will refuse anything that has an insect component. Always ask if you are making it for someone else who is vegan, or just assume cochineal is off the table.