Tis the season for fall baking! Cozy vibes abound, but they can sometimes feel off limits to those who eat dairy-free. Therefore, we’re back to testing recipes to see if they can be made without dairy, but still deliciously.

For your holiday dessert table, you might consider the humble but mighty apple cake. Dressed up with some caramel frosting, could be it delicious and dairy free?

Ready, set, bake!

Method:

Recipe source:

Sally’s Baking Addiction Apple Spice Cupcakes

Frosting recipe below!

Dairy-free substitutions:

1) Instead of melted butter in the cake batter, I used canola oil.

2) Instead of the butter and shortening in the frosting, I used all margarine (Imperial brand margarine sticks).

3) Instead of milk in the frosting, I used almond milk (bettergoods Original).

Procedures:

Cake Baking Steps:

The cake batter assembly is pretty straightforward. Mix up the dry ingredients in one bowl. In a separate bowl, mix up the wet ingredients in the sequence suggested. Add the wet to the dry, and then I added in the chopped apple.

Above: Dry ingredients
Below: Mixing up the wet ingredients

Note to Sally’s Baking Addiction: Thank you for providing weights with each ingredient! I find using weights as a unit of measurement really helps with improving precision (e.g. apples come in all sorts of shapes and sizes!) and minimizing clean up.

Then, I poured the batter into the pans and baked! I made 9 cupcakes (8 pictured because one was eaten THAT FAST), and one 6-inch cake following Sally’s Baking Addiction tips.

Dairy-Free Caramel Frosting Recipe

I get so excited for anything caramel- maybe because caramel items are so often dairy and off-limits to me! I had this recipe copied and bookmarked for, maybe decades, in my recipe binder. So sadly, I cannot tell you the source, but if you know it, please let me know so that I can give credit appropriately.

Ingredients (see substitutes above)

1 cup dark brown sugar
3 T shortening
2 T butter
1/3 cup milk, or half-and-half
Powdered sugar- as needed

Steps:

First, melt the margarine, brown sugar, and milk. Once cool, add in “as much confectioner’s sugar as needed to desired texture.” Adding one cup at a time, I found 3 cups to be too runny for decorating, but 4 cups was a little too thick and pasty, so I added about another tablespoon of almond milk when I whipped it back up when I was ready to frost. If I got to try again, I would try 3.5 cups of confectioner’s sugar. I added in 1/2 tsp of salt as well, but I’d love to try more next time as well.

Results

Progress over perfect, right? I know my frosting skills need work but this was fun to do and even more delicious to eat.

Review from my mom, my lifelong food critic: “I wouldn’t regret this if I ordered it in a bakery.” She added that she was impressed by how flavorful her cupcake was!

Discussion

Our hypothesis was mostly supported! We made delicious dairy free cupcakes and a mini-cake. We also made passable caramel frosting.

Strengths of this recipe adaptation included relatively simple dairy free swaps. The oil in the cake worked well, especially because I kept it refrigerated, and the oil did not harden (unlike butter or margarine).

Some changes I’d consider for future replication are mostly around the amount of sugar added to the frosting, perhaps making it salted caramel, and perhaps trying a new recipe overall. I also think adding something like an apple or apricot jam in between the cake layers would help cut the overpowering sweetness and heaviness of the frosting.

Will I keep up with the Great British Bake Off theme weeks? Who knows, I’m already behind. In this new era, I’m finding it difficult to write these longer blog posts, so we may see a new format in the future. Please let me know what parts you find most interesting and useful!

Fall for Apple Cake with Caramel Frosting