Looking for Good 1St Birthday Cake Recipe

The absolutely best chocolate cake, as soneone else mentioned, is the one on the Hersheys cocoa box. It is super easy and fast and tastes fantastic.

Easy one and low sugar. 1 cake mix and 1 can of diet soda, any flavor. Do not add anything else and cook it the regular way it says on the box. Dont add anything but the pop. You can frost it with sugar free pudding (dry) mixed with cool whip. This cake is very moist..I do diet coke with choc cake, but any flavor will work.

Hi T.,
Good for you for being so aware what you put in your son's little body! We avoid sugar for our 2 year old as well and for his first birthday, I made a carrot cake with no sugar. My family and guests love this cake so much, they always ask me to make it! Here's the recipe:

Boil together:
2 1/2 Cups grated raw carrots
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of frozen apple juice concentrate, thawed
Lower to simmer, cover, and cook 15-20 minutes or until carrots are tender. Puree in blender until smooth. Add:
1 1/2 cups dried fruit (I use raisins)
and process until fruit is finely chopped. Let cool. Preheat oven to 350. Grease 2 9" cake pans. In large bowl, combine dry ingredients:
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
2 tablespoons baking soda
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
Combine wet ingredients:
2 eggs
4 egg whites
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 1/4 cup apple juice concentrate
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and beat until well mixed but don't overbeat. Fold in carrot puree from blender and add 3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce. Bake 35-40 minures.

For the icing:

1 1/2-2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup apple juice concentrate divided into 2 tablespoons and 6 tablespoons
16 ounces cream cheese
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup finely chopped dried fruit

In small saucepan, stir 2 tablespoons of thawed juice concentrate into gelatin and let stand 2 minutes. Heat to boiling and stir to dissolve. In blender, mix the rest of ingredients until smooth. Beat gelatin mixture into crem cheese mixture until well blended. Refrigerate for 30-60 minutes until frosting begins to set and use to frost cake.

This is from the book Super Baby Food, there are some really great recipes in there if you want to pick up a copy. Happy Birthday to your son!!

I baked my son an Applesauce Cake for his first birthday. The recipe is from the Joy of Cooking.

1 3/4 C of flour
1 C raisins
1/2 tsp of salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
(sift the flour before measuring, then sift a little over the raisins - it keeps them from sticking together. finish by sifting all the dry ingrediants together)

1/2 C butter or shortening (i used butter - cream it until smooth)
1 C white or packed brown sugar (i used brown, don't know why, but i think it's healthy than white. probably not. cream the sugar with the butter or shortening, whichever you use)
1 egg (beat that into the butter/sugar mixture)

Gradually stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture until it is smooth. Add the raisins (the cake is good w/o too if you don't like raisins)and:
1 C applesauce (i used the unsweetened kind)

Bake in a 350 oven. I used a 9" round pan (the recipe calls for a 9" tube pan) or you can make cupcakes. The reipe suggests a caramel icing (too sweet for me). I made a cream cheese frosting (yum).

1 1/2 C powdered sugar (sifted)
8 oz cream cheese
3 TBSP milk (add gradually, you may need a little less)
1 or 2 tsp vanilla

This is pretty easy to make. There is also a carrot cake recipe in the what to expect the first year book. I made it for my daughter; it wasn't very moist and I spent a fortune on ingredients. Good luck to you. Have fun an enjoy his special day.

Bake a yellow cake of your choice in a 13x9 pan. Cool slightly- poke holes all over with a fork.
Defrost a can of OJ concentrate and pour all over, it will soak in. Yummy! My DayCare/Preschool kids always loved it.
L.

PS--reading the other suggestions-- please don't use Splenda for children (or you)---it is an artificial sweetner

Hi T.,

I always end up making our birthday cakes only because my 3-yr-old has a peanut allergy. A lot of from scratch recipes end up having a very different texture than boxed ones (at least when I make them!) One that is really moist, really good and easy is the recipe that's on the tin of Hershey's cocoa powder, the unsweetened kind that's used for baking. It still calls for 2 cups of sugar, but you could always cut it back a little or, like someone else metioned, use applesauce for part of it. I feel better about putting my own organic sugar in a recipe anyway instead of buying a mix with all of the preservatives and artificial stuff. You could even top it with strawberries or something healthier than frosting if you want. Good luck!

N.

I don't have a suggestion as far as a recipe, but a design, I did this for my son's 1st birthday. It was really easy and turned out so cute. It is a dinosaur cake, you just use a 9x13 pan, so you don't have to spend money on a new pan, here is the directions and a picture
http://bettycrocker.com/recipes/recipe.aspx?RecipeId=34326

Good Luck!!

I've seen people do a Jell-O mold. It is really cute, and wobbly, and funny to watch them eat! You could even do sugar free!

We decided that we wanted to keep our little guy off of sugary stuff for a few years (a decision that has NOT been easy, by the way, due mostly to the efforts of family, friends, and the general public to undermine it), so for his first birthday we just served cake to everyone BUT him and made him his own little healthy treat - I think it was yogurt with blackstrap molasses and a candle stuck in the middle! You could do bread and peanut butter, or whatever. Sorry I don't have a recipe! You could possibly look up some low-sugar banana bread recipes and make a cupcake out of it. Blessings!

I would try a banana bread recipe and bake it as a cake or cupcake. You could try Sprouts for a boxed cake mix. Sometimes they have different types of mixes that use more natural ingredients.

Read the ingredients on any cake mix box before deciding if you want to make that for your one year old. It's pretty eye opening. What I did for my youngest was make a bread recipe and just bake it as a cake. Banana or carrot bread would work great. Use maple syrup or honey and use less. Up to half less. You don't need frosting because he doesn't know the difference! I would avoid cool whip. It's made with corn syrup, HFCS and hydrogenated oils. Have a great birthday celebration!

You can sweeten any recipe with fruit juice. I'm thinking apple juice is the sweetest if your little one can tolerate apple juice! Happy Birthday!

A good alternative is Xylitol. It is all natural sugar from certain plants that is absorbed as a complex sugar. No sugar high and it is good for teeth (you may notice that some chewing gum contains xylitol). It is slightly sweeter than cane sugar, but the taste is almost identical. Just use a little less. I make all my cakes from scratch using whole wheat pastry flour and xylitol. I also use cream cheese and mix it with powered xylitol ( I powder it in the blender) for the frosting. You can find xylitol at health food stores.
Just don't overload on it cos it can cause diarrhea,
Good luck!

I heard from a teacher the other day to get a Jiffy brand cake mix and add either a banana or a handfull of blueberries, etc. It only makes a small cake (8x8 vs 9x13). Then you could try a cool whip style frosting. Good luck & congratulations!

I don't have a recipe, but when my girls turned 1 yr.old I made them their own cakes. It was a bear sitting up.(Wilton Cakes makes the pans). Decorated with little stars. I was very glad I did this as when we had the cakes in front of the girls they reached out and grabbed handfuls of the cake. Everyone else at the party was glad I made them seperate cakes. So we could have slices of cake not "handfuls". My girls are now grown with kids of their own and they've also done this. Good luck and have a great time.

Hi T.,
I have my Mom's carrot-bread recipie if you're interested. We had that for about half of our birthdays growing up: without frosting (I guess we were weird kids).

T

I remember in Martha Stewart's Kids magazine she had several healthy cake recipes for first birthday parties. I'm sure you could look on her website in the archives. One was an applesauce-based cake and there was at least one other. I also loved the idea of making a banana bread or zucchini bread, etc. in place of the cake. Good luck and take lots of pictures of your little one's special day!