Cake / Allergy Advice

Keith:)

My Son is 4 in August and towards the end of last year we discovered he had a nut allergy, recently we have been trying to find a Birthday Cake for him but it would seem all retailers stick Not Suitable for Nut Allergy suffers on every cake, for example the entire Waitrose selection has this listed. This seems standard across the board for all shops (I understand why this is).

We approached several cake bakers and suppliers and they will not accept orders for nut free cakes.

I was wondering if anyone else on here had experience of this and if they found any alternative routes to getting a nice birthday cake?


My wife and I do not have great experience in cake baking, I have done some research and have bought some items to get started, we are probably going to do a basic cake until we gain confidence!

I have seen the Wilton Spiderman moulds etc but the cost for perhaps just one birthday seems extravagant? We have also considered renting cake moulds but after looking at some in a local shop it didnt seem that good or clean for that matter.

One method we might try is a number cake from a simple square cake, one other area I am unsure of is the icing, you can buy icing sheets to place around your cake, are these easier than spreading icing that you have made on?

Any advice or thoughts appreciated.

Thanks

Keith

whitewing

I don't know about nut allergies so I don't know if it would work. It depends on whether you want a great-looking cake, or if you will just be happy if your son loves it.

At 4 years old, my son loved nothing better than a normal sponge cake, with glace icing, decorated by himself with loads of different sweets. Looks awful, have to be careful of eating too much and getting hyper, but they are really proud of it.

I don't know how easy it is to get nut-free sweets.

Titch89

Do you have any friends who would be bale to bake a cake for your son?

Siren137

I can understand your problem as my boyfriend has a nut allergy as well!

I always bake him cakes as that way we know it is safe. Cakes are fairly easy to make if you get an all in one recipe where you basically throw all the ingredients in, mix it whack it in the oven and there you go. I used roll on icing to do my sister's cake the other year. Its dead simple to use, just roll out to the size you want and stick it on with a little water. I then mixed some icing with food colouring, made different colours and decorated it.

I've found a piccie, here you go:



For my other half (he is a squaddie!) I got a square cake tin bake two layers in it cut one smaller stuck it on the top with buttercream then decorated it with biscuits, icing and a milky way crispy roll and there we have it a tank cake!

shegha

Why not make small cup cakes and decorate them as they are a lot easier. If he likes spiderman you vould by some spiderman cake toppers some supermarkets sell them or look on ebay your should be able to get persionalised one from ebay. They are printed diss on icing or rice paper that you could just attach with icing.
If not cover the bun top with red or blue icing and pipe an spider web ontop ( or you could use the lace style sweets)

Keith:)

Thanks for the useful info, we are going to make a practice cake in a couple of weeks, hopefully it will go well. I appreciate your advice though and will look to use this information. Thanks for clearing up my icing question...