Egg, Dairy and Nut Free Vanilla Cake

For the Cake

1 1/2 C all purpose flour

1 C sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 C oil (vegetable or canola)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 Tbsp rice vinegar

1 C rice milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a large mixing bowl mix together sugar, oil, vanilla and rice vinegar.  In a separate bowl mix flour, baking soda and salt.  Alternate adding the flour mixture and the rice milk to the mixer beginning and ending with rice milk.  Beat to just combine.  This recipe makes 12 cupcakes, 24 mini cupcakes or 1 eight inch round cake pan.  Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

For the Icing

In a pinch or to be cheap I use Pillsbury Vanilla Funfetti Frosting.  It has no dairy in it.  If I really want to make a tasty frosting this is what I do:

1 C Earth Balance 

3-5 C powdered sugar

1/2 C rice milk

1 tsp vanilla extract.

With a mixer on low speed combine Earth Balance, sugar (1 cup at a time until you like the consistency), rice milk and vanilla extract.  

Egg, Dairy and Nut Free Ice Cream Cake Pops!

I saw the originals on www.bakerella.com.  Typically you would use candy melts or chocolate for these, but then they would not be dairy free.  So, I decided to experiment.  I baked my E,D,N Free cake (recipe to come) and crumbled it up mixing it with frosting as instructed on the Bakerella website.  After forming the balls and refrigerating for a couple of hours I melted some frosting (I used Pillsbury Vanilla Funfetti Frosting because a homemade butter frosting would melt and get gross if sat out) by microwaving for 5 seconds.  Then I dipped my cake balls in that, sprinkled them and returned them to the refrigerator.  About an hour later these sweeties hardened up and looked like this.  What do you think?  I think it worked pretty well considering I didn't really know what I was doing!  Next time I will experiment with different shapes and color the frosting.  I cut the tops off of waffle cones this time (as instructed by Bakerella) to make these cute mini "ice cream" cones.  This was really fun and the kids loved them.  What's not to love, cake, icing, more icing, sprinkles!

Egg, Dairy and Nut Free Sugar Cookies

3 C all purpose flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 C Earth Balance Buttery Spread

1 C sugar

1 TB (heaping) apple sauce

2 TB rice milk

powdered sugar for rolling

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and set aside.  Mix sugar and Earth Balance until light and fluffy.  Add apple sauce and rice milk and mix to combine.  Gradually add flour mixture and beat until dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl.  Divide dough in half and wrap in wax paper.  Refrigerate for 2 hours.  Dust surface with powdered sugar and roll out dough.  Cut in desired shapes and place on parchment lined baking sheet.  Bake for 7-9 minutes or until edges turn just slightly golden.

The fondant recipe for these cookies comes from http://www.cakejournal.com/archives/how-to-make-marshmallow-fondant

Egg, Dairy and Nut Free Cinnamon Scones

2 C whole wheat flour

1TB baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 TB sugar plus more for dusting

1 tsp cinnamon

5 TB Earth Balance

3/4 C rice milk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Stir together flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and cinnamon.  Cut in buttery spread until coarse crumbs form.  Add milk until dough forms.  Taking 1/4 dough at a time pat out into a square.  Cut square in half diagonally to make triangles.  Place on parchment lined cookie sheet.  Brush tops with rice milk and sprinkle with sugar.  Bake 10-12 minutes.  

Seriously...

Isn't this the sweetest thing you have ever seen?!  I just want to wrap these sweet things up and squish them and hug them and smooch them till their cheeks fall off!  Was that weird?  Sorry, can't help it.

Dr. Suess Week!

We had so much fun reading Dr. Suess books this week!  We used Dr. Suess as a unit study for the week.  Here are some pictures of the projects we created for each of the four books we used.

We made pockets and Wockets to put in them!

How do you like our ears?

Does this hat make us look tall?

Just hanging out with Fox in Socks wearing our cool socks.

3 Reason I want to Whine Today

1.  I have some kind of sinus thing going on.  The weather keeps changing, (cold, warmish, rainy, sunny, snowy) so my sinuses are going crazy.  I remember wondering as a kid where all the snot came from.  Well, I'm still wondering.

2.  The baby had an accident and exploded on the couch.  It's disgusting.  She is not the first child to do this.  Somehow I'm always surprised and frustrated by this.  Somewhere in my mind I know it's going to happen.  I hope each day (in vain, apparently) that it won't happen today.

3.  I ran out of I do, I do Wedding Cake ice cream.  I think this might be the most upsetting part of the day.