Organic Baby Friendly Birthday Cake

As I began the arduous process of making Cyril's birthday cake Friday night it dawned on me that despite considering myself a baker, I haven't actually made a cake since I was 5 years old, and I'm not talking a box cake, I'm talking a full on homemade extravaganza. Once I came to this realisation, I quickly poured myself a glass of wine and got ready to tuck into the task that lay ahead.

This process was made somewhat more challenging because I decided to make an all-natural cake with no butter, sugar, or nasty colourings whatsoever. 

Everything was going great, in fact it was probably going too well, then I flipped the cake over to cool and the middle fell out, several curse words later, I picked up the middle (now on the counter) put it back in the cake tin and let it cook for a further 10 minutes. To my relief it had congealed back together. Two more layers baked and 5 hours later the cake was cool and ready for frosting.

I planned to do an ombre effect with blue cream cheese frosting but refused to use food colouring. After a little research online, I decided to puree some organic blueberries to mix in the frosting. Despite what I read, pureed blueberries don't make the colour blue, or even purple for that matter but a very pale pink. Since I had no more ingredients to start again, and was running out of time, I decided he would just have a pink cake and I added some beet juice to deepen the colour.

Another mistake I made was not softening the butter before blending. It said room temperature, but I think room temperature means 70 degrees not 50 so the frosting was a little chunky. I made up another small batch of cream cheese frosting with the remaining ingredients and then I prayed as I put the frosted cake (which took me 1.5 hours to frost because I'm a perfectionist) into the refrigerator over night.

I woke up and was thrilled at how good it actually looked despite all the shortcomings and then I noticed a pool of water that had built up overnight in the cake stand. Fortunately, the stand had sloping edges so none of the water was on the actual cake. A few chopped strawberries, one blueberry heart on top and the cake was ready for display, phew!

At this point I had no idea what it tasted like but I'm happy to say that I've had several requests for the recipe and neither Josh or I can get enough of how tasty this all-natural cake is. While I was frosting the cake, I kept saying over and over how I understood why people paid so much money for someone else to make the cake. However, when it was finished I was very satisfied with my accomplishment and I'll definitely be making Cyril a cake for birthday number 2!

Without further ado, here is the recipe you've all been waiting for!

Coconut Apple Maple Spice Cake, Yum!

Ingredients: (This recipe can be halved so that you can either make one 12-inch round cake or a double decker cake with two 8-inch round tins)

1.5 cup coconut oil
2 cup maple syrup
2 TBSP water
4 medium eggs
2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 cups organic cake flour or plain flour* (See instructions below if using plain flour)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon cinnamon
4 cups organic chopped apples

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 325F or 160 Celsius and butter two 8-inch round cake pans and one 12-inch round cake pan. The above recipe can be halved if you want to make a mini smash cake for the baby. I doubled the recipe to account for the additional 12-inch round cake pan.
2. Warm the coconut oil in a glass measuring cup until it is runny, then pour into a large mixing bowl. 
3. Add the maple syrup, water, vanilla and mix well. 
4. Add the eggs and mix wet ingredients together.
5. In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. *If using plain flour remove 6 TBSP and replace with 6 TBSP cornstarch and sift 5 times before adding the baking soda, cinnamon and salt, this will lower the gluten content of the flour and make the cake more fluffy. 
6. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet and combine but do not over mix.
7. Fold in the apples and combine to coat.
8. Divide batter between the three pans and bake for about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
9. Cool on a wire rack, then loosen around the edges of the pan with a knife and invert cakes onto the cooling rack. Serve warm or cool and frost.

The above recipe was adapted from Simple Bites.