Sunday, August 26, 2007

First Birthday Cake


For my son's first birthday, I had to consider what kind of cake to make for him. I made one of the boxed cake mixes for my daughter's first birthday...and now I regret not baking one from scratch (even if I was going to use milk, eggs, butter, and sugar...at least it would be fresh and not contain aluminum baking powder).

I decided to make a cake our whole family could enjoy...the Orange Layer Cake from The Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook. I was still concerned about my one-year-old eating honey, but figured that for as little cake as he would eat he would be alright. He's further behind his sister at eating, as he is still breastfed and we haven't pushed too much food at him given the allergies that run in the family. Although honey is still sugar, it has to be better for you than refined sugar.

This was a vegan cake...no eggs, butter, milk, wheat, refined sugar. And, I use aluminum-free baking powder in all my baking. I juiced the oranges for the fresh orange juice, and ran the peels through the juicer to get them all ground up for the zest it calls for in the recipe.

The cake itself consists generally of oat/brown rice flour, safflower oil, honey, vanilla, Ener-G-Egg Replacer (a great egg substitute), unsweetened applesauce, orange juice and orange zest. The frosting is a neat little creation using vegetable shortening, honey (and I used 1/2 the honey it called for and 1/2 brown rice syrup so it wouldn't be so sweet), vanilla, rice milk, "Better Than Milk" Vanilla Rice Powder (I found this on Amazon.com - it's like powdered sugar only better), and the zest of an orange. It was pretty hot that day and so the frosting is a little gooey and runny, but I guess that's part of the fun!

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