BYO birthday cupcake

On the weekend I took my big girl to the birthday party of one of her kindy friends (great party!). As usual we took along a cupcake for her to have instead of the birthday cake...

When she was tiny we found out that she is allergic to eggs and nuts. This generally isn't a huge problem, more of an inconvenience, and it's not too difficult to avoid both. When it comes to parties though, a girl's got to have cake! So I make a batch of egg-free cupcakes now and then and freeze them, then on the morning of the party take one out of the freezer to defrost, ice it and away we go. She seems very happy to have her own special cake and I try to decorate it to look nice so she doesn't feel she's missing out.

Below is the chocolate cake recipe, originally given to me by my friend Sarah (thanks Sarah!). It's super adaptable (see the notes) and very reliable. If you know someone with allergies, need to make an allergy-free cake for pre-school or just don't have any eggs in the house and want to make a cake, give it a go. Another time I'll post my special occasion egg-free cake (containing apple - yum!) and other egg-free baked goods.


Easy egg-free chocolate cake

1 1/2 cups SR flour
1 cup sugar (can use all white or a combination of white and brown)
4 tblsp cocoa powder
1 cup milk (or water to make it dairy-free too)
1/2 cup oil (vegetable, canola, sunflower or olive)
1 tblsp vinegar (white, malt or red wine)
1 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 180c (or 160c fan forced) and place patty pans into a muffin tin (*see note below about making one large cake). Mix together the flour, sugar and cocoa powder in a medium bowl (I generally don't bother sifting but you might like to if your cocoa is lumpy). In a jug or separate bowl whisk together the milk, oil, vinegar and vanilla essence. Add to the dry ingredients and whisk (mix will be quite runny). Spoon into patty pans and bake for about 18 minutes or until cooked.

Makes about 12 cupcakes.

* Alternatively use a small round cake tin or loaf tin to make one cake