Milk Free Strawberry Cake

First Birthday Cake

I will make a brief appearance today to share with you a cake I made last weekend. I made this at the request of my sister-in-law for my nieces' first birthday party. Her children both have severe milk allergies. So she asked if I could just use store bought strawberry cake mix and Duncan Hines Vanilla Frosting. Both are milk free.

Let me tell you, I'm not used to working with gooey soft store bought icing, so it was a bit of a challenge. Her colors were blue, pink, and black and white. This is what I came up with. It's not my best work, but she was really happy with it. I simply removed the top layer for the birthday girl so she could dig into it and we cut and served the bottom layer to the guests. The birthday girl was so cute, she made a giant hole through the side straight into the middle like she was trying to eat her way to China! I think she liked the strawberry filling!

The black letters are her name that went all the way around the cake. In hindsight, I would have done that differently, because you have to turn the cake to see her full name.

I used Fonderific Fondant in white because it was the only brand I could find that was milk free. I used Wilton Sky Blue and Duff's Electric Pink to color the icing and fondant. After I cut the letters, I used a food safe marker to color them black. It was a lot easier than trying to make black fondant.