Thank you, Sadsmile! That was "take 2" of that bow, the first one crashed and crumbled.... practice practice.

I just posted pics of a Rosh Hashana cake that I finished last night, in case anyone wants to see. I made the "honey" out of carmelized sugar. All the fruits and flowers are gum paste.

Now I have to go do the "real" cooking...

Shana tova!

Thank you so much, Malishka!!

Rich's Bettercreme is non-dairy (doesn't contain lactose) but does contain milk protein (caseinate)...

Non-dairy advertising can be very misleading.

For a similar thread, please see:

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-653585-.html

HTH

if it contains milk ingredients it is not truly non-dairy.

Hey guys I had to share this site with you. It a few ingredients you may be interested in. Remove the space from the middle. http://www.naturesflavors .com/product_info.php/products_id/4416

They have vegan, Kosher, Parve ingredients and chocolate.

wow...some really neat ingredients there! Thanks for sharing!!

A friend of mine and I are thinking of starting a biz for Kosher Wedding Cakes and such.....this is a great thread since I have a hard time NOT baking with milk and butter. So this is very good.

I was wondering if any of you might be willing to share your experiences as a biz.....how you keep it Kosher. I had spoken to a Rabbi and he said that I would have to be closed on the Sabbath and on the holidays as well...the whole week of Pesach, Sukkoth, and Hanukkah. Is that true?

I apologize since I haven't read through the entire thread yet, but I have wondered whether you can sub. non-dairy milk powder for milk. And isn't there an issue with using fondant since it is made with the gelatin?

I know the basics, that as a Kosher bakery, that means everything I buy has to be marked as kosher, but does it have to be approved by a Rabbi?

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I really want to make sure that we would be making the right decision and nobody really replied to a previous topic I posted.

Thanks. Shana Tova

Yes Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown is rest from what I understand. And all equipment must be only used for Kosher. You can't go back and forth with regular ingredients. So either you do 100% Kosher or you have two of everything and keep them separate.

You'd definitely have to be closed for the sabbath. Also the week of Passover (plus if you are Jewish, there are some other technicalities involved with Passover, since you're not actually supposed to own anything that isn't kosher for passover. There are ways around this, usually a symbolic selling of your stuff for the week to a non-jew. You can ask the Rabbi about it).

There is no reason to be closed the entire week of Sukkoth, it is just the first two and last two days which you couldn't be open, as they have the same restrictions as the sabbath, in terms of conducting monetary transactions, operating electrical machines, etc.... Hannukah does not have these prohibitions, so you could definitely be open then.

There are several brands of kosher fondant, including Wilton (which tastes gross, IMO), Satin Ice, and Baekels.

Some great substitutes for milk are soy milk and rice milk. There is also non-dairy creamer (like Rich's), but it tends to have a lot of artificial ingredients, and doesn't taste so great. I almost always use soy milk to keep my baked goods non-dairy. Most kosher bakeries have the vast majority of their products pareve (hebrew term for non-dairy), so there are certainly ways to bake well without dairy.

There are different types of kosher certifications which are accepted by different people, at various levels of observance. If you want to make sure you're covering all your bases and making your business accessible to the largest number of kashruth observers, then your best bet is to consult a national organization like the Orthodox Union (www.ou.org) or the Star K (http://www.star-k.org/). They should both be able to guide you as to how to get started, what expense are involved (it will incur a cost to be certified), and answer other questions.

There are also many regional, local kosher certifying organizations and individual rabbis, but I would research which ones in your area are most widely accepted by kosher observant people, so that you'll get the most 'bang for your buck.'

One last suggestion: If there are other kosher establishments in your area (restaurants, delis, take out, etc...) I would see if their owners might be willing to talk to you and tell you what their experience has been dealing with the local kosher certifying agencies. There are a lot of intricacies involved, many of which can be an inconvenience. But you should gather your info and then decide if it's worth your while to pursue.

Hope that helps, best of luck!!

Wow Miriam! Thank you. I know quite well about what is involved for Pesach (cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning ) . Glatt kosher is not something I am interested in either.

Do you have any suggestions on where I can get some good pareve recipes?

Miriam, do you own a biz? Have you had a 'problems' or difficulties running a Kosher cake biz?

Saberger, you're welcome! You're 100% right about Pesach... my grandmother used to say that on Passover, god freed the Jews from Egypt and enslaved the women!

As for Glatt, it's totally not relevant to anything but meat. It's become this ubiquitous term that people use for anything they think is "super" kosher, but technically it just means that the meat labeled "Glatt Kosher" comes from an animal that had no imperfections in its lungs, whatsoever. See here: http://kosherfood.about.com/od/kosherbasics/f/glatt.htm So a bakery could never be glatt kosher, even if it wanted to be! Unless of course, you're making beefcake - but that's a whole other thread all together... lol!

A great place to find pareve recipes is kosher cookbooks. My favorite chocolate cake recipe is from The Kosher Palette book by Susie Fishbein - it's called "Ultimate Chocolate Cake." I use soy milk in it instead of milk. But go to a judaica store or some other store with a good selection of kosher cookbooks, and you'll probably find some really good ones.

I don't really own a formal cake biz - yet. I work full time as a partner in an IT company, and the cake stuff is my moonlighting, creative outlet. It recently has begun to get some traction though, so I'm encouraged and thinking about the possibilities. I did look into getting kosher certification, because a friend asked me to do a wedding cake for her sister. But because I'm working in a home kitchen, the local kashrut overseers wouldn't give me certification, so I couldn't bring the cake to the kosher catering facility. It was a real bummer, but I ended up making it anyway for their Sheva Brachot party (see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheva_Brachot) at a private home, and the bride and groom were very happy. I posted a pic of it in my photos (the tall, black and white one). My most recent accomplishment is the violin cake, I also posted some pics of it.

So we'll see where it goes, for now I'm still working the "day job" to pay the bills and put three kids through school, and doing this for fun and creative fulfillment. But maybe one day cake will be my full time gig, a baker can dream, right?

I took a look at your photos - your work is lovely!!! Do you have a full time cake business? Btw, I'm also in NJ.

Hope all the info is useful for you!!

There is a soy milk powder and it is Vegan, Kosher Parve Look for the link I posted http://www.naturesflavors.com/product_info.php/products_id/4416

Like JanH I have never heard of a "non-dairy" powder other then coffee creamer listed as non-dairy.

But beware those things that state "non-dairy" do in fact contain dairy ingredients like sodium casienate and lethicin and a few more that hide under scientific chemical names but are milk by-products.

Sorry about that....my 22 month old was climbing all over me when i wrote that and I ended up combining the two. You're right....I meant the non dairy creamer.

When I was looking at ingredients.....it seems that I have pretty much already been using Kosher - except for butter or some of those things which I could easily get Kosher versions of and wouldn't change the taste so much of my dairy baked goods. But if I want to offer Pareve, then I have to come up with good stuff. I got a cookbook, Jewish Holiday Baking by Marcy Goldman, which seems to have some nice recipes...I'll have to read into it further. I did google non-dairy and almond milk was listed as an alternative (as well as soy and rice). Anybody used that?

There is an almond milk in the cold case right near the Silk soy milk and it is yummy. They cost about the same give or take depending on which one is on sale at the time. I use and like both for regular use and for baking.
What are the ingedients on your non dairy creamer and what kind is it?

Recently my cake store had parve candy melts.  They repackage them so asked them to call the warehouse and tell my what hechsher is on the main package; which was o-u parve.  I won't buy them repackaged but I would buy the case, if they will work like the dairy versions.  (I never used the dairy versions but based on the recipes I see, I would like something like that.)  The Gefen brand melts do not work the same and need oil to make them smooth.  I use Fleishman's unslated margarine--the green package (not red, it's dairy).  I use soy milk or rice milk but a good substitution for heavy cream in some recipes is the canned coconut milk.  The full-fat variety of coconut milk, in the cardboard cartons also might be thick enough.  I too am shomer Shabbos and keep my things parve.  Kol Tuv.