No sugar added birthday cake success
February 23rd, 2012
When I was a kid my mom always made me a special birthday cake in the shape of different characters. I guess I always knew I’d bake Danny a cake for his special day too. But the thought of serving him sugary sweets made my heart feel sad. As I continuously say and believe: It doesn’t make sense to celebrate our lives with food that makes us weak and sick.
Off I set on a quest to find a birthday cake that I could feel good about. Maybe it would be a slightly adjusted layer cake recipe, maybe it would be a meatball with a candle stuck in it, I didn’t know. But I knew I was not going to make a normal white sugar/white flour cake.
(Hey, this is his first birthday we’re talking about. He doesn’t know the difference. I expect I have a year or two before I’ll have to sometimes give in to his requests for the white stuff.)
Anyway, I started searching for the perfect recipe. Let me tell ya. Not a lot out there. But I have an old cookbook from Annemarie Colbin (author of books like Food and Healing) that had just what I was looking for.
Whole wheat flour. No processed sugar. None. Not even honey or maple syrup. Just bananas and apple juice for sweetness.
And you can see in the photo, we’re talking a full-on layer cake with icing. Hello, dream come true!
Danny liked it! And we liked it too. But to be fair, the cake itself was very dense and wet from all the bananas. Not too sweet, it actually makes a nice breakfast rather than dessert. I’m not sure I’d make it again, though it definitely did the job this time around.
But what I’d absolutely make again is the icing. In fact, I recommend this icing over the sweet potato brownies I posted last week. You could even use that recipe in layer cake form instead of a 9×13 pan.
By the way, have you ever read the ingredients on a jar of store-bought icing? Goes something like this:
Sugar, Vegetable(s) Oil Partially Hydrogenated (Soybean(s) Oil Partially Hydrogenated, Cottonseed Oil Partially Hydrogenated), Water, Corn Syrup, Corn Starch, Mono and Diglycerides, Salt, Color(s) Artificial, Yellow 5, Red 40, Polysorbate 60, Potassium Sorbate Added as a preservative, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Flavor(s) Natural & Artificial, Milk Chocolate (Sugar, Chocolate, Cocoa Butter, Milk Skim, Milk Fat, Lactose, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Flavor(s) Artificial), Sugar, Corn Starch, Corn Syrup, Yellow 5 Lake, Blue 1 Lake, Red 40 Lake, Yellow 6 Lake, Blue 2 Lake, Dextrin
That’s heart disease and diabetes and ADD, all in a single jar.
The icing on this cake?
Bananas, cocoa powder, organic butter, vanilla extract.
And it was totally delicious. While I can’t give away Annemarie’s cookbook’s recipe, I can tell you this:
To make an awesome real food icing
Get a couple very ripe bananas
Add a little cocoa or carob powder, butter and vanilla
(I suspect peanut butter might also make a nice variation)
Blend. Refrigerate. Spread.
Now that’s how I like to celebrate life. With real food, and good health.
What do you remember about birthdays as a kid? Did you have any special foods or traditions?
