1st Birthday cake: carrot with tofu/vanilla frosting

An healthy and tasty first Birthday cake: it sounds like a culinary challenge. An unusual list of ingredients (tofu for frosting??!!!) that will end in a delicate cake that is perfect for your little one (100% allergy free) and will also please the rest of the family.

Recently I’ve been testing a lot of 1st Birthday cake recipes as my little Alex is getting close to his 1st Bday. The tricky part is to bake without using the traditional ingredients like eggs, milk, sugar and butter that you might not have introduced yet in your baby’s diet. I was not happy at all with a lot of recipes (too chewy, no taste at all, too cheesy, too gummy, strange flavor….) and my official testers, my husband and my 3yrs old Luca made really funny faces when testing some of the samples 🙂 The “testing committee” gave thumbs up to this carrot cake with tofu and vanilla frosting. The cake itself is not too sweet, very delicate and works very well with the creamy tofu frosting. Definitely on the top 5 we tried.

CAKE INGREDIENTS:

1 cup grated carrots
1/2 cup whole grain flour1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking powder
5 tbsp agave syrup
4 tbsp coconut milk
2 tbsp extra virgin oil of olive
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

FROSTING INGREDIENTS:

1/2 lb firm tofu
2 tbsp extra virgin oil of olive
2 tbsp lemon juice
5 tbsp maple syrup
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

First thing to do: preheat the oven at 350 F. Than drain the extra liquid from the tofu. Remove the tofu from the container and place it in a plate in between two layers of paper towel. Put any heavy weight you can find in your kitchen (a pan, the salt container…) on top of it to help the liquid draining out. Let the tofu drain for at least 30 min.

In a bowl mix all the dry ingredients and in a separate bowl mix the wet ones. Gently combine the dry ingredients with the wet ones and stir the mix.

I decided to go for a one layer cake this time and I used a 6 inch cake pan. Bake the cake in the oven at 350 F. for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile prepare the frosting. Mix all the ingredients for 1/2 min in a food processor up until you will obtain a nice and compact cream. Place the cream in the refrigerator for 30min (or 1 h if you can) to get more firm.

When the cake is baked and cooled down you can start the decoration with the frosting. This kind of frosting will never get very thick and I recommend to prepare the final decoration the day of the party, if you keep the cake overnight in the fridge, the frosting will get hard.

Enjoy the cake and most of all enjoy your little one 1st Bday day, it’s a special one!!!

See you next week with another recipe and I would be happy to listen to your comments!

ciao!b