Dairy Free Iron Man Birthday Cake

Tomorrow is Andy's birthday, so I spent today making him a birthday cake (and he spent today washing up the piles of stuff that I left all over the kitchen). He's a big Iron Man fan, so I decided to make him an Iron Man birthday cake using this technique. It's essentially tracing a picture onto greaseproof paper with buttercream icing, freezing it and placing it onto the cake. When you peel the greaseproof paper off the icing it leaves the picture on the cake! If you want detailed instructions (with pictures) I suggest you check out the post I linked to. I'm far too tired and sticky to write a long blog post tonight.

Anyway, because of Jack's milk allergies I had to make the icing without using dairy butter and I honestly wasn't expecting it to work. I was convinced that the icing wouldn't freeze properly and the paper wouldn't peel off cleanly (even though I substituted some of the dairy-free spread with vegetable shortening). As a result I really didn't put much effort into making the tracing neat, or checking that all the gaps were filled and the icing was smooth. It didn't seem worth it when I was so sure that it would fail. I don't know if that makes it more annoying that it worked perfectly. Everything froze as it should, and the paper peeled off without the slightest smudging.

I wasn't terribly careful with the placement or the plain icing either. I was so sure I'd have to scrape it off anyway.

You can see here that the icing was bumpy, but that was totally my fault for not being more careful with piping it.

This is the first time I've ever attempted to decorate a cake with buttercream like this, so I'm really pleased with how it turned out! And now I know what to do (and what not to do) for Adam's birthday in July.