Congratulations, Your Baby is ONE!

If you are reading this article, congratulations!  You made it through the first year of your child’s life.  This is a major accomplishment.  The first year of a baby’s life is the most wonderful, blessed time, but it is also the hardest, most exhausting year ever. 

It’s time to celebrate!  Whether you like to go all out for birthday celebrations, or prefer a small, family affair, you’ll want your child to experience cake, probably for the first time.

I consider myself moderate with what I let my child eat.  I limit sweets and treats and try to always have veggies on his plate.  But when he turned one, the thought of him having preservative-filled cake with overly sweet powdered sugar frosting seemed too much to me.  I believe that “everything in moderation” is a good mantra, so I scoured the internet to find a healthy-ish cake alternative.  And you’ll notice that the frosting doesn’t have the usual 3-4 cups of sifted powdered sugar!

This was a big hit with all of the young children at the party.  For the adults, I made a traditional yellow cake with the leftover frosting from below.  Everyone loved the 'less sweet' frosting.

Taken from Cait Johnson, author of Witch in the Kitchen.

Pumpkin Apple Cake with Whipped Cream Frosting

CAKE INGREDIENTS:

1 cup canned pumpkin puree

2 large eggs, beaten

¾ cup organic sugar

¾ cup unbleached all-purpose flour

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground ginger

½ tsp salt

½ cup chopped apple

½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans (I omitted the nuts)

CAKE DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 325.  Grease and flour an 8-inch round cake pan.

2. Combine pumpkin, eggs and sugar in a large mixing bowl.  Add flour, cinnamon, baking powder, ginger and salt, stirring to combine.  Add apples and nuts, stirring again.  Pour mixture into prepared pan.

3. Bake 20-25 minutes until toothpick in middle comes out clean.

4. Cool the cake, still in the pan, on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes, then invert the pan onto the rack and remove cake from pan.  Cool on wire rack completely.

5. When ready to serve, put cake on a pretty plate and top with frosting below.

FROSTING INGREDIENTS:

1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened

1 cup white sugar

1/8 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 ½ cups heavy cream

FROSTING DIRECTIONS:

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar, salt and vanilla until smooth.  In a small mixing bowl, whip the heave cream until stiff peaks form.  Fold into the cream cheese mixture.  Frost cake liberally.

Enjoy and Happy Birthday Baby!