A cake of Purple

I've had a pretty awful cold for the last week so I've mostly been out of action.  It is my mother in laws birthday and with only a small amount of notice I was asked to make a cake for after her birthday dinner.

It is a carrot cake with buttercream filling and icing.  This is a Confetti Cakes recipe for carrot cake.  It is made so differently from any carrot cake that I've ever had.  I put it down to regional differences.  I cant wait to taste it to see what it tastes like.

The 'buttercream' actually contains no butter! My father in law is dairy intolerant and quite by chance I decided to make this carrot cake and was about half the way through making it when I realised that it contained no dairy what so ever.  This was quite exciting because I always feel so rude making something he cant eat. I though oh help, I suppose I should try to make it completely dairy free as well.  As I didn't have a lot of time (you know 3 kids including 1 baby and all) I opted for a buttercream finish as I didn't have to time to plan and make decorations with enough time to dry sufficiently. Anyhow this buttercream is 1 part Olivani (here in NZ one of the few completely dairy free marg's) and 2 parts icing sugar.  I had looked around on chef google and had heard that if you beat margarine to much it can split, which presented a problem.  I wanted as whiter icing as possible. It's filled and partly crumb coated with the white (dont ask me why i crumb coated it with white as i'm not really sure... baby brain)  While mixing I was watching like a hawk for signs of splitting and I thought it was coming up just a bit dry - this is where I would normally reach for the milk. Right dairy free.... so had a bit of thought about it and realised I had some glucose syrup (corn syrup) and added some of that.  It must have had a stablising effect on it or something because I beat the living daylights out of that buttercream and it never split.  It is actually a beautifully firm icing.  I was concerned that because it was margarine that it wouldn't stand or it would droop and look like it was melting or something. But it's actually really good!  I flavoured this buttercream with lorann's flavouring oil in cheesecake flavour so the icing tastes very similar to a cream cheese icing.  Awesome right?!

This will be cut tonight after dinner tonight. I'm excited that I get to taste a new cake recipe and that it's completely dairy free so everyone at the table gets to have some.