Yesterday was my three year anniversary. Jeff and I got married surrounded by all of my family and friends in my hometown and I just can’t believe it has already been three years. Part of me feels like we’ve been married forever and part of me feels like it was just yesterday I was picking out my wedding dress.

It has been quite a wonderful, busy three years. We had an incredible honeymoon in Europe, moved, completed a masters degree, added a french bulldog to the family, travelled to Boston a handful of times to see Jeff’s family, added a rescue dog to the family and our most exciting endeavour, adding our baby Ellie to the family this year. I have enjoyed every minute of these three years with Jeff and I really can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with him. So, with this third year, came a different way of celebrating. Usually we would have gone to a fancy dinner or out to a show but this year with baby in tow and nursing still under construction, we decided to relax and enjoy what we had right in front of us.

While Dad was at work, baby E and I decided to make an anniversary cake. This was a bit tricky because of my new dairy free life style (a post for another time about finding whats bugging baby E in my diet). After searching the internet and my cookbooks for a suitable dairy free recipe that would entice my husband to enjoy the cake as well, I ended up using one in the Betty Crocker (Bridal Edition- how fitting 🙂 ) cookbook. Just a simple yellow cake recipe but I thought if I replaced butter with coconut oil and milk with rice milk, this might just work. Here is the recipe. It turned out tasting more like a glazed donut after I threw together a dairy free frosting that melted right off the cake. But it was yummy none-the-less. So I thought I would post the recipe here for anyone else going through some allergy/lactation issues.

Dairy Free Anniversary Cake (originally Betty Crocker’s Starlight Yellow Cake)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup butter softened (I substituted 1/2 coconut oil)

1 1/4 cups milk (I substituted rice milk)

3 1/2 T baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350. Grease bottom and sides of two 9 inch round pans. In a large mixing bowl, add all ingredients and mix together with an electric mixer for 3 minutes. Pour into prepared pans. Bake for 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely and then frost to your heart’s content.

For the frosting which did not turn out the way I wanted but then ended up giving the whole cake more of a glazed donut feel :

1 cup coconut oil

4 cups confectioners sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 T rice milk

mix together until fluffy. Let sit in the refrigerator for about an hour and frost lightly.

We may not remember the cake but I think we will certainly remember the first anniversary with our sweet baby. She definitely made it a great one.