Hey all!

We recently found out last year that our son is allergic to milk products! We love cake/cupcakes (and boy do we miss ice cream) and it has become really difficult for us to find places that cater to food allergies such as his. A cake with no milk is a pretty crazy concept, I know. Anyway, I really want to try and bake our upcoming birthday cakes dairy free (eggs are fine) so he can enjoy them !

Anyone out there have any great vegan or dairy free cake recipes to share? Also butter cream/icing and filling recipes would be GREATLY appreciated! Thank you!!

My daughter recently had her birthday party and invited her friend who is deathly allergic to milk. So I made cupcakes from this: http://cakecentral.com/recipes/2122/vegan-chocolate-cake, and I made the frosting from this (got rid of butter flavor(has dairy) and used the water suggestion instead of milk.) http://cakecentral.com/recipes/7378/cakepros-buttercream-with-trans-fat-free-crisco The cupcakes didn't really look fluffy, but they were yummy! Especially with the frosting! And the great thing about them too is that they don't make crumbs. We had 15 kids with cupcakes and virtually no crumbs! =) I highly suggest them. =)

Mostly, you can use any recipe, and sub out the butter with dairy free margarine, or even oil and use soy or rice milk in place of the milk. (I've even used rice milk in place of the sour cream and it works fine)

I make dairy free stuff a lot, because my DH and I are both lactose intolerant. Rice milk seems to be the best cooking sub for cows milk. Saffola is a true dairy free margarine, that also works well in baking. If your using it to make icing, it does have a distinct flavor of its own, so I usually use extra flavoring or some spices.

You can substitute any soy milk for dairy. I even put vinegar to sour it for when there is a call for buttermilk.
Earth balance makes a great soy replacement for butter, margarine and shortening.
You never have to use dairy.
Just make sure you now read all packaging since your intolerance is probably to the cassein which is the protein in milk. It is used a lot without placing the work dairy on the packaging.
Good luck but it is really easy to substitute.

I just got off of the phone with the mom of my daughter's friend who is allergic to milk, and she told me that most of the Duncan Hines cake mixes are dairy free. She gave examples of the spice cake and devil's food (and a few more that I didn't write down). But look on the boxes to see. Plus, if you have a Smiths grocery store where you live, the Smith's brand semi-sweet chocolate chips are dairy free as well. She once made the spice cake mix with the chocolate chips into cookies and everyone loved them. She said she uses the cake mixes for cookies all of the time. Just make it up as your suppose to and drop them on the cookie sheet. =)
HTH!