Sugar-Free Baby Cakes

I hope you’re not tired of hearing baby birthday updates, because I have a couple more things to share!  Today is all about the sugar-free baby cakes that I made (one vanilla coconut strawberry, one sorta-chocolate).  You can make these as a healthy option for any occasion and I’ll also mention what I wish I had done differently (to save you some hassle!).

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If you’re making these sugar-free baby cakes for a baby, make sure that you have “tested out” the ingredients with your little one ahead of time.  You should introduce new foods for a few days to see if there are any allergic reactions; and I based the recipes on things I knew baby could eat (so far he’s been good with everything!).

I also wanted to me mindful not to have any added sugar, so all the sweetness comes from fruit!  AND just for fun I made two different types of cakes, and each recipe yielded about 5 mini cakes (they’re actually ice cream bowl shapes) and 12 mini cupcakes.

You could probably get 12 regular sized cupcakes out of a batch, if you want to go that route instead.  (Or even one 8″ pan).  For the mini cakes, I just sliced off the bumped out parts so that they were flat across the bottom.

I served the birthday boy one of each of the mini cakes, and had some mini cupcakes out for the guests. (You can see more of our red and white party setup here).

Print Recipe

Sugar-Free Baby Cakes

Dessert – Canadian

By Nicole Q-Schmitz – Serves: 12

Total Time: 1 hour

Do you have a special birthday coming up, and want to make some sugar-free baby cakes!? This dessert is made with basic ingredients and can be customized!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup margarine*
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1-1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup "sweetness" **
• 1 cup "liquid" ***

Instructions

1

Preheat oven to 350°F

2

Using a hand mixer, blend the margarine, vanilla and eggs together

3

In a separate bowl, mix the flour, salt, powder and soda

4

Combine the bowls then stir in your "sweetness"

5

If the recipe is too dry, slowly add liquid until you reach the desired consistency

6

(See notes for more info)

7

Fill greased muffin tins (or 8" cake pan)

8

For mini cupcakes, bake approx. 15 minutes

9

For mini cakes / regular cupcakes, bake approx. 25 mins

10

For a cake, bake approx. 45 minutes

Notes

* For the vanilla coconut cakes, I used coconut oil instead of margarine and added a LOT more vanilla extract ** For the vanilla coconut cakes, I used ground up coconut flakes as my sweetness and about a cup of water to make the mixture more liquidy (I'm sure coconut milk/water would be fine to use as well and may add more coconut flavour) *** For the chocolate cakes, I used 1 cup of blueberries and 1 cup of beets and blended them together in the food processor. (I didn't have to add additional liquid, but I wished I had done all (or more) blueberries instead). I also added about 1/4 cup of cocoa powder. The third time I made these, I used a can of peaches (with juice concentrate vs. syrup) and they were delicious!

For the icing, I simply drizzled on some plain Greek yogurt, added a couple sliced strawberries and some shredded coconut.  (To keep everything sugar-free, I used plain Greek yogurt, and added a couple of teaspoon of vanilla extract for flavouring).

Tip: If you’re not worried about having sugar-free baby cakes, you can use flavoured Greek yogurt (vanilla or coconut would be great!) instead of plain.

You can also use sweetened coconut, but I went with the unsweetened of course :)

Chocolate Sugar-Free Baby Cakes

Aka things I would do differently…

I mentioned that I used blueberries and beets in the chocolate baby cakes.  I wanted to add flavour, and I knew that these dark veggies/fruit would also be a great way to darken up the batter too!  I simply added them to the food processor and stirred the blended mixture into my batter.

Tip: I felt that the flavour of the beets overpowered the taste of the cakes… almost too “earthy”.  Beets were traditionally used to make red velvet cakes, but 1 cup was definitely too much!

In the future I think I would go with all blueberries – but they were definitely SUPER moist either way :)

For the chocolate icing, I had my mom mash up some avocadoes and add some cocoa powder.  We had about 3 avocadoes to maybe 1/3 cup of cocoa?  It was too much for the amount of cakes we had, so I think starting with just 1 avocado would have been better…

While the chocolate baby cakes certainly looked delicious… the taste was not that great (for an adult who is slightly addicted to sweet things!).  A cup of sugar would have probably made these so much better, or maybe a different choice of icing base (I don’t really like avocadoes to begin with…).

Image First Appeared in Red and White Table Decor

It would have probably been better to use the same yogurt/strawberry icing combo… or really just the yogurt with any fruit on top!

Another bad part about the chocolate cakes is that they got MOLDY really quickly. I had them stored at room temp, and within days they were getting fuzzy green spores. I would probably make a version of these again (doing all blueberries instead) and would definitely store them in the fridge!

Nevertheless, the little mister really liked both of his cakes, and he even got to enjoy the chocolate ones for a few days (I had the ones that were pre-iced in the fridge, so they were good!).

The health experts say to avoid all added sugars and salts in babies’ diets; and I definitely want to adhere to that as long as possible.  As someone who probably eats way too much sugar, I know that it will be easier to keep sugars away for as long as possible, than being exposed to them and trying to cut back.

When I was looking for baby cake recipes ahead of time, a lot had added sweetener in the form of honey or maple syrup.  Another tip: you should avoid all honey until around aged 2!  I thought that fruit would be a much better sweetener, and healthier too :)

Do you have a special first-birthday coming up, and want to make some sugar-free baby cakes!?  Maybe you’re trying to cut back on your sweets and want to enjoy something guilt-free. Whatever the reason, this simple and healthy dessert is made with ingredients you should have on hand, and you can always customize the icing (and the batter) however you like!

Just remember to read all my “what not to do” tips :)