A Real-food Birthday

The other day I did a post about Infertility and it got me thinking about my two wonderful children I have been blessed with. We recently celebrated their birthdays and I tried my best to provide a REAL-Food birthday menu. My son’s birthday was easier and my daughter’s was in the midst of a busy time of year, so truthfully I cut corners and it was not all Real-food. I won’t get into the whole menu of each, but one thing I would not compromise on was the cake…I was determined to find cake, which not only tasted good, but looked and felt like cake as well! I am happy to report I found two fabulous recipes and adapted them to fit our tastes and ingredient availability.

Every kid deserves a fabulous birthday cake even if it needs to be Real-food. I did an owl theme for my daughter’s birthday. I did a basic cream-cheeese frosting using organic sugar cane, which I whizzed up in my blender to make a powdered sugar. Half was left plain for coloring and half I made into chocolate for the brown of the owl. The frosting dye I used, is NOT Real-food, but I cannot find a natural dye I am happy with. I chose a Vanilla Bean cake for the base recipe from The Spunky Coconut, but I wanted a strawberry cake so here is the recipe I came up with:

Strawberry Bean Cake

Ingredients-

-2 cups cooked and cooled white beans (I cooked myself, not sure if canned beans would work well)

-6 eggs

-1 Tbsp vanilla extract

-1/2 cup vanilla Agave (couldn’t find liquid flavored stevia, so used Agave & ommitted honey)

-1/4 cup melted butter

-1/3 cup coconut flour

-2 bags of freeze dried strawberries, pureed into a powder (this adds wonderful flavor to cake, but increases the dry ingredients, so you might need to add more liquid to balance batter)

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1 tsp baking soda

-1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Directions: In blender or food processor puree all ingredients through butter. Sift coconut flour through baking powder and add to wet ingredients. Puree until well blended. Bake in greased pan 325 degrees for 30 minutes.

For my son’s birthday cake we chose a coconut flour chocolate cake from Tropical Traditions and it was super tastey. The flavor was great, it held up well for decorating, but it was really dense and a little dry. I would definitely use the recipe again, just might need some tweeking to make it lighter and moister. I used a cream-cheese frosting for his as well and the same goes for the dye, NOT Real-food. If anyone knows of food coloring that’s natural and has great colors please let me know!