Another non-dairy icing is rolled fondant that you make yourself from icing sugar, water, gelatine and corn syrup. Use the recipe from any old Wilton book, it works perfectly every time. If you have a large table, you could try real fondant--nothing but sugar, water and corn syrup. Real tricky to cook but makes beautiful smooth icing when poured over a crumb-coated cake. You could cook up a fruit curd with the coconut oil instead of butter for a filling. The large amount of fruit juice and egg makes it taste really good anyway. You can even add some to the buttercream if it doesn't have to be fishbelly white--it comes a nice pastel shade. Lime and coconut is a dream combo. I would avoid butter flavouring altogether. Vanilla and citrus are natural nondairy ideas that leave nothing missing from a pastry project. Call the cake a Chefs Special instead of dairyfree and they will gobble it up. For people who can't live without chocolate, melt unsweetened at the rate of no more than 3 ounces per cup of butter in your recipe, and cream part of the butter into it. This blends smoothly with the whole batch of buttercream and won't break it. Irene: Excellent ideas, all, particularly the tip about creaming the butter into the melted chocolate. That's the kind of little step that makes a HUGE difference in the quality of the finished product, and will ensure that no unincorporated clumps of chocolate are lurking in the frosting to clog up the piping bag. Thanks so much! Susan.

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