Sugar Free First Birthday Cake

[alieh]

My son turns 1 soon and is thus far sugar free. I'm wondering if anyone has recipies for a cake that would be messy with "frosting" for the affect and taste good, but keep within our chosen dietary requirements of no sugar & artifical sweeteners. I'd like to also avoid large amounts of honey & maple syrup. I might entertain date sugar or brown rice syrup. Any thoughts or suggestion?

[MoonStarFalling]

I think banana puree would make a nice frosting. For the cake, I've posted my recipe many times here, but basically a carrot cake or applesauce cake with maple syrup as the sweetener. I don't use much maple syrup at all. Half a cup probably.

[Carley]

Cream cheese blended with fruit makes an AWESOME frosting! Beet juice can make it pink, obviously, but I bet blueberries would turn it blue! Any fruit works & fruit zest is a great addition. Last time we made frosting I used peaches & nectarines. I use a spash of oj to make it workable, but it's really not necessary.

Applesauce (or any blended fruit!) make great sweeteners for cakes. So do chunks of sweet fruit - the juice from sweet pineapple, for instance, sweetens all the cake around it.

Blended dates + liquid ingredients make a powerful sweet syrup - if you're open to dates there's your maple syrup sub! Even just finely chopped dates in a cake make it super sticky & sweet. I <3 date cake. Mmm.

I don't know how you feel about juice concentrates, since they're essentially condensed fructose, but they have intense sweetening power. I bet just a little orange juice concentrate would sweeten up a carrot/pineapple cake just like honey/sugar/syrup would.

I want some cake! :

[lil_earthmomma]

Whipped cream with plain gelatin and vanilla makes a great GREAT icing. The gelatin stabalizes it so it doesn`t melt, and the vanilla gives it flavor. Since he isn`t used to sugary food, it will taste great! I make unsweetened whipped cream in my strawberry shortcake, and all I get are raves.

[Carley]

Oh that sounds delicious!! What a great idea!!!!

[witchygrrl]

I've been thinking about this too as my little one will be turning one in a little over a month. Great ideas!!!!

[Moonglow Girl]

If you've got a sugar free muffin recipe, that would work well too. With cream cheese and pineapple "frosting."

Our sugar free first birthday cakes didn't go over well with the birthday kids. Too dense.

By #3 we'd moved on and went with the muffins (called 'em cupcakes though).

They were less dense than most sugar free cake recipes and a lot easier for the birthday boy to gobble up and make a mess with.

Have fun!