Cooking with two: sugar-free wacky cake

So a while ago I posted about our amazingly healthy cake but now we've gone a step further... I wanted Iz to be able to join in cake making so obviously needed an egg-free recipe (as she still eats *everything*). The obvious choice was a "wacky cake" (google it for lots of recipes - it's something that was created during the Depression in America when things like eggs were expensive and/or hard to come by). But all those recipes use sugar and I thought it would be nice to keep it sugar-free too so I played around with the recipe and here it is:

EGG FREE

DAIRY FREE

SUGAR FREE 

And delicious!

This recipe is great for doing with kids as you can mix and cook it all in the same pan and you don't need to use an electric mixer. In fact, after I measured put the right quantities, D made the whole cake himself (with a little help from Iz!). Pretty good for a 2 year old! 

Recipe:

200g flour (plain or self-raising)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

60ml cooking oil

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

225ml water

300ml fruit puree

Step-by-step instructions:

Tip in all the dry ingredients

Spread evenly throughout the tray

Making a mess optional...

Make 3 wells in the mix - one small, one medium and one large one

Pour the vanilla essence into the smallest well

Add vinegar to the medium one (and watch it bubbling away!) and oil to the largest well

Pour the water over the top

Mix well to combine all the ingredients

Add the fruit puree

Mix well again

You can taste the raw cake mix as it's egg free

But be warned... before cooking you can taste the vinegar!

But don't worry, the taste doesn't last long!

Distract the baby for the final mix

Spoon into a lined cake tin

Cook for about 20 mins at 160 degrees (fan) - use skewer test to check :)

How simple was that?! You can also cook it in the same tin you mix it in but I wanted to make 2 small round sponges to make a layered cake. The quantities above are the perfect amount for a two layered 6" cake.

I'd also read two rumours about decorating wacky cakes. Firstly that it's really hard to get them out of the cake pan and secondly that it's difficult to ice them (beyond a thick top layer whilst still in the pan). Anyway neither of those were going to discourage me and here is the end result... Not bad I think! They definitely can be decorated so don't be put off trying!

Iz's first birthday cake

Mmmmm delicious!

The final cake was delicious and kept really well - we slowly ate it over 4 days and just stored it in a tupperware container in between. This was such a fun pre-birthday activity to do with both the kids :)

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One thing this taught me is that recipes are quite forgiving and you can mix and match different ones together and with only a little adjustment you can create the perfect cake for you. So get creative and let me know if you try making a wacky cake, sugar-free or not :)