Buttercream Icing Fail

So I learned a valuable lesson on the weekend - you can't make buttercream icing with a dairy substitute.  We were having friends over for a barbeque rotisserie chicken and to watch the rugby (NZ has gone mad with rugby because of the Word Cup) so I thought I'd make a cake for dessert.  

I have been very inactive in the kitchen lately, mainly due to this nasty virus which is still hanging around.  Jenna wanted help to make a cake for a friend's birthday so I sat and directed while she did it.  She made buttercream icing with real butter and it looked beautiful, all piped nicely on the top.  Well done Jenna.  I made a second cake (easy as it was a "chuck everything in the food processor" one) and the cake itself was great.  As my friend coming for dinner is also allergic to wheat and dairy I decided to make the buttercream icing from Olivani (I can tolerate butter, just not other forms of dairy so I would normally use real butter too).  

Well, what a disaster!  It just wouldn't set.  We ended up having cake with the icing in a jug to pour over.  Nevermind, it tasted good and the cake went down a treat.  Just learned my lesson.  

By the way, I have recently discovered (not sure if I've written about this before) that you can use coconut cream instead of cream in many circumstances.  You put the can in the fridge for at least 24 hours before you need to use it.  What happens is that the cream rises to the top and the watery part sinks (weird right).  Then you carefully, without shaking it, remove it from the fridge and remove the lid.  Scoop out the cream part and throw away the water.

Now, you have a lovely cream that you can beat.  I add icing sugar to it as it tastes better.  I have spread this on the top of pavlova or in between the layers of a cake and it's beautiful.  This is what I should have used in my chocolate cake.

Try it, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.