BellyHealthy

My favorite birthday cake of all time has got to be yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I’m not much of a cake person in general, but I’ll make an exception every year for my brithday with this one: the good, old fashioned, my-mother-started-making-it-for-my-birthday-when-I-was-four-and-never-stopped-because-I-wouldn’t-let her, Betty Crocker mix. But how to survive with all the dairy in the mix? It’s a box of absolute doom for my body, and without fail, I suffer for my weak willpower after.

So this year, I chose this Valentine’s Day/Lunar New Year weekend to test out the Manischewitz version of yellow cake mix. (My birthday isn’t for another two and a half months, but I’m all about preparation!) These little gems turned out beautifully, if slightly crisper than I’d hoped. The batter was grainier than Betty Crocker’s, and it didn’t smell *exactly* the same in batter form. But I’ll be damned if the resulting cooked cupcakes didn’t taste exactly like the original dream cake. PLUS, the Manischewitz Chocolate Frosting fooled everyone I gave these to: family, colleagues and friends. Nobody could believe chocolate that good could be dairy free, but it was. Bonus!

Since I’ve started so early, I might even hazard a guess at how to make this without a pre-made mix, but should my birthday ever catch me unawares and I suddenly need to have my perfect birthday cake, I now know this will work perfectly.