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A slice of vanilla birthday cake with purple icing and sprinkles on a white plate with a fork beside it and more cake on a turntable behind it
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Vanilla Dairy-Free Birthday Cake

This dairy-free, gluten-free birthday cake is a healthy twist on a classic recipe. Naturally light it can be topped with dye-free icing and your choice of decorative sprinkles!
Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 33 minutes
Cooling time 1 hour
Total Time 45 minutes
Servings 12
Calories 565kcal
Author Shelby Stover

Equipment

Ingredients

For the birthday cake

  • 1 cup Unsweetened applesauce
  • 8 eggs
  • 1 cup olive oil
  • 6 tbs honey
  • 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup coconut flour
  • ½ cup arrowroot powder
  • 4 teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon sea salt
  • ½ cup cane sugar

For the dairy-free frosting

  • 1 cup vegan butter
  • 3 cups icing sugar
  • 1-3 teaspoon color optional

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
  • Halve the cake ingredients and portion them out (you need to mix the layers separately, see notes).
  • Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, oil, honey, and vanilla extract ingredients until combined.
  • Add wet to dry. Grease two cake pans. Pour the cake batter into one of the cake pans and let sit while you repeat the steps above for the second cake.
  • Once both cake pans are full, let sit for 5 minutes to absorb.
  • Bake the cakes for 30-33 minutes keeping an eye on them in the last few minutes. They should be golden on top and VERY soft to the touch.
  • Remove from the oven and let the cakes cool fully (for roughly one hour) in the fridge in their pans before using a silicone spatula to remove them. Take care as they're delicate.
  • Once removed from the pans, pop the dairy-free vanilla cakes into the fridge until ready to ice.
  • Use an electric mixer to whip together the icing ingredients until fluffy.
  • Remove the cakes from the fridge and begin icing and decorating as you prefer.

Video

Notes

    • This dairy-free birthday cake is double layered. This means two cakes! However, because coconut flour absorbs so much, I find it better to make the cakes separately (halve and mix the ingredients separately) then pour the batter into two cake pans (see notes in blog post for more information).
    • This vanilla birthday cake uses two 8 inch circular cake pans and yields roughly 10-12 servings.
    • The cake is soft and therefore a bit delicate. It’s better to ice it after having it in the fridge for at least an hour, otherwise, you risk tearing it a bit.
    • The icing is best pipped immediately after whipping. If you place it in the fridge for longer than five minutes it tends to harden and won't easily come through the piping bag.
    • If you plan to use multiple icing colors, before adding the color, whip the ingredients and separate the icing into batches to color individually.
    • While the amount of frosting in the recipe card is great if you're just icing the gluten-free cake, if you want to truly decorate it, you may want to make 1.5x the batch.

Nutrition

Calories: 565kcal | Carbohydrates: 60g | Protein: 5g | Fat: 34g | Saturated Fat: 8g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 6g | Monounsaturated Fat: 19g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 109mg | Sodium: 285mg | Potassium: 203mg | Fiber: 4g | Sugar: 49g | Vitamin A: 884IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 78mg | Iron: 1mg