Amazingly healthy cake

So I've tried making healthy cakes before when D was younger but they were always really heavy and not very tasty. Having played around with this for a while I now have a super delicious COMPLETELY SUGAR-FREE cake recipe that even I love eating :)

The bests bits about it are:

- no refined sugar. At all

- it has lots of fruit in it - that's right, a slice of cake can now count as 1 of your 5-a-day!

- you can do it all easily by hand (no electric mixer required) and super quickly. I whipped up 2 double-layer rainbow cakes and a batch of cupcakes in about an hour the other night!

Furthermore it has:

- no honey (not suitable for babies under 12 months)

- no added salt

- no weird ingredients like flax/spelt etc that some "healthy" recipes pay for

When thinking about making a smash cake for Iz's first birthday I really wanted to find a healthier option than regular cake as Iz can be rather greedy on occasions and so I wouldn't have been surprised if she had just sat and eaten the whole cake in one sitting! The icing also had to be healthy and ideally sugar-free and here it is... don't let anyone ever tell you that you can't have your cake and eat it :)

Doing the initial taste test...

Cake recipe

8oz flour (you can use wholemeal or white flour)

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

3 bananas

1 large egg (or 1.5 medium ones)

200ml fruit purée (eg 2 Organix fruit purée pots)

60ml veg oil

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Combine dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of dos, mixed spices)

2. In another bowl mix wet ingredients (mashed bananas, eggs, fruit purer, oil, vanilla extract)

3. Mix the 2 bowls together

4. If you want to colour your cake then separate the batter into different bowls now and colour each one (you can read full instructions here)

5. Spoon into a greased cake tin and cook in a pre-heated oven (approx 180 degrees) for 20-25 minutes - make sure you check it with skewer as everyone's oven is different though!

Seriously how simple was that?

Raw mixture

Once coloured and cooked

Icing recipe

1 tub full fat Philadelphia

1 pot fruit purée (I used a mini Ella's kitchen fruit pouch but you could easily make your own instead)

1-2oz cornflour

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

All you need for healthy delicious icing

1. Have the cream cheese at slightly chilled/room temp

2. Slowly beat until smooth being careful not to overbeat it (that'll make it more runny)

3. Stir in the fruit purée and a few drops of food colouring (I used colour gels)

4. Add 1oz of cornflour, mix carefully and then add more cornflour as needed

5. Refrigerate when not in use

Before coloring

Ready for icing to occur

The final product :)

When making a smash cake you want the icing to be slightly runny so it's easy to make a mess. If you're making the cake as a proper birthday one that you want to cut slices from then add slightly more cornflour as this will stiffen the icing more. I added slightly less cornflour to Iz's icing (nearer 1oz rather than 2oz) and you can tell in the pictures that it is more runny than D's:

The squidgier the icing the better during a cake smash!

Mmmmmmm mess

So there it is. Delicious cake (and icing), packed full of fruit with NO refined sugar at all and suitable for babies under one as there's no honey or salt either. I'll post some more pictures of the cake smash in a separate post but if you try this recipe I'd love to hear what you think :)