My daughter's 9th birthday party is tomorrow.  She has a dairy allergy that we've discovered just in the last year or so.  She has requested something other than my usual dairy free ABC because she says it tastes too much like my usual buttercream and it reminds her too much of when she would feel sick and can never enjoy it.  Tonight I made an SMBC with half spectrum organic palm oil and half earth's balance butter substitute.  I followed a dairy free SMBC recipe to the gram, but stupidly did not check the sugar to fat ratio against my SMBC recipe (I have one but have only made it once or twice).  It tastes like nothing.  I added about 10 times the amount of vanilla, even added in a bunch of corn syrup, and it still tastes like nothing.  When I looked back at the recipe there is almost twice as much fat called for as sugar.  Blech!  I tried to convince my daughter to add some sort of other flavor in to it to help, but she is adamant she wants it the way it is.  

I'm totally embarrassed to serve this at her party.  It's a small party, but all of her friends have had my usual cakes made with milk & butter and always look forward to it.  I don't expect them to eat more than a bite!  The cake itself is a different recipe too and I have very little confidence in it.  I'm allergic and can't taste it anyway, so I'm going off of what my kids have thought.

Shouldn't be that big a deal as long as she's happy, right?  Is there something I can do to sweeten it or add more flavor without getting away from vanilla?  This is completely stressing me out!

Add some powdered sugar.  You can add as much or as little as you need to.  Add a little and have your daughter try it then go from there.  I always add powdered sugar to my SMBC an it tastes NOTHING like ABC.

Thank you!  Will try it ASAP!

Hmmm, now it just tastes like sweeter nothing.  The thing I don't like about SMBC is it tastes like you are eating a sweetened stick of butter.  Maybe my dislike is the SMBC itself?  This is like eating sweetened palm oil.  Can't believe I'm going to have to serve this...

What flavour is the cake? Could you add some cocoa powder to it and make it a chocolate SMBC? Or could you add some butter flavouring to it? Essentially SMBC is butter/eggwhite/sugar so that's what it's going to taste like. It sounds to me that you may be right and you just don't like it. I have no doubt that plenty of your friends will like it just the way it is.

Make sure to serve it at room temperature so that it is soft and hard SMBC is terrible. I leave my cakes out overnight in a cool room as it's only family and friends that I know well eating it, this prevents it getting all hard and clumpy.

The cake is vanilla, too.  We are using a strawberry jam-style filling though.  The only saving grace, I think.  She's allergic to chocolate too so that's a no go.  

Adding the powdered sugar definitely helped, but it did break.  I was able to get to come back together and I think it turned out pretty well.  Between the extra sugar and whipping it longer it lost the fatty mouth feel that I don't like about most smbcs (and butter in general).  I will definitely try again, but this tim with a closer sugar to fat ratio.

Thanks for the help!

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Looks great!  I'm sure Abby loved her cake :)

Do some googling on vegan recipes.  Vegans have come up with some great recipes that are non-dairy.  Getchen's bakery actually has a recipe using bean water instead of eggs!  It wouldn't work for you because It has butter and it's a smbc, but just an example of the brilliant ideas people come up with.

Thanks!  Yes, I am very familiar with vegan recipes!  Aquafaba is fantastic & makes great meringue cookies, too!  There is an all vegan SMBC recipe, but it uses earth's balance and I'm not a huge fan of the flavor.  I was going to try the following vegan recipe, which doesn't use earth's balance, but I was worried it would be a little too out there for a group of 8 & 9 year olds.  In case anyone has this come up in a search & gives it a try, let us know how it goes!: http://www.cakespy.com/blog/2015/8/24/what-happens-when-you-make-buttercream-from-chickpea-water

Mayim Bialik was on celebrity cupcake wars and did some vegan recipes.  I may be losing it but I swear that I remember her using tofu (????)  Anyway, the judges were a little worried about it but gave her a thumbs up.