For Gretchen's birthday cake, I semi-followed a Banana Cake recipe that I spotted on Green Parenting. I love that there's no added sugar -- I only dusted the top with a little icing sugar before serving.
Here's my tweaked version of the recipe:
½ cup butter, softened
3 large eggs
½ cup unsweetened applesauce
¼ cup water
2 cups unbleached flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ cup water
2 cups unbleached flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1-2 cups fresh blueberries
Mix bananas and butter together until nice and smooth, then add applesauce and water. In another bowl, beat eggs until foamy -- add to banana mixture. Then slowly blend in flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon. Then stir in blueberries. Pop in the oven (I actually used greased glass tart pan, but you could make cupcakes, or use a cake pan, or even a loaf tin) for about 20-30 min (depending on vessel of choice) at 350° or until it tests done (aka a knife inserted comes out clean). Let cool, dust with icing sugar & enjoy!
This cake definitely had a loafy texture to it, but the sweetness was just right with the bananas and berries -- so tasty and Gretchen loved it! She nearly at an entire slice to herself & I felt great knowing she wasn't being pumped full of chemicals & icing & all sorts of nasty traditional cake ingredients.
Happy baby, happy mama! Bon appetit!
12 comments:
Happy Birthday miss Gretchen!
We had the birthday party today.
I guess I'm one of the bad parents because i made him a vanilla cupcake WITH that nasty sugary buttery icing sugar. But it was nice to see him try something so wildly different.
Yumm! And happy b-day to your sweet baby!
We got and get so much grief and not so funny comments from our family/friends at our children's little parties because my husband and I make healthy cakes for them like this yummy cake or carrot cakes, raw coconut "cream" pies etc.
Apparantly my kids are being deprived of the standard b-day cake.
I think the guests are just disappointed they didn't get the regular cake and ice cream themselves :)
I have to admit at cringing at a 1 yo digging into the "normal" sugary bday cake.
But to each his own :) Nothing wrong with those that do, we just do things a little differently in our house :)
BTW love your blog, I am making an effort to come out of lurkdom with all the great blogs I love to read :P
Lililly: Awe, you're not one of those bad parents ^_^ I'm pretty much the only one out of my group of friends who didn't do the traditional birthday cake thing. I almost wanted to, but couldn't quite bring myself to do it -- plus I actually don't LIKE cake that much, so this was yummy for me too ^_^ Ha!
Happy birthday to ZJ <3 A year! Ah!
Mary Beth: Thanks for commenting!! I always love to hear from my readers! <3
It looks wonderful! What did you use to make the hearts? - Shannon | Confessions of a Loving Wife
Shannon -- I cut heart shapes out of card stock, then laid them on the cake, sprinkled sugar & then removed the shapes!
It looks gorgeous! And sounds so yummy too!! For Wesley's first birthday cake I made a carrot cake with no sugar in it as well. I had never made a carrot cake from scratch before and it took me FOREVER!! My family thought I was crazy making him a "healthy" cake and my mom insisted on bringing a huge store bought sugary one for everyone else because. *eye roll*
AND the store bought one came with a free SMASH CAKE which is a small cake that is nothing but frosting and pure sugar that you are supposed to give the one year old to go nuts with!! What?! I gave in and let him have it and he just looked confused, haha. I think my mom ended up sticking his hand in it to give him the idea of what he was supposed to do. I took it away before he really ingested too much though and he LOVED his carrot cake and ate it up!
Smash cake?? Omg that sounds like a recipe for a diabetic coma!
that sounds (and looks) yummy!
Love it, thank you!
Trying to bake it today - mix made, ready to go and damit - my oven has died!! What tha! Have to go to my grans to bake it.
This is the plan for my bubas birthday too :) But of course a test run was needed.
Oh, yay! I'm sure it will turn out super tasty! Sorry to hear about your oven troubles :) Let me know how it tastes ^_^
(The cake... not the oven, hah!)
Well, my mum loves it! lol
But, looks a bit flat to me!? Its not nice and fluffy, its heavy, kinda glugy. I dont know. My pumpkin bread seems to do the same thing - maybe its the plain flour?
Any ideas on why normal flour rather then self raising?
Hmm, I'm not sure about the flour. I just always use the unbleached flour, never used the self-rising.
Did you whip up the eggs a ton til they are foamy? I'm not a baking expert so I'm not totally sure what else could un-fluff it! :) Haha.
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