Planning a birthday party is never an easy thing, especially when it's your baby's first ever birthday and you want it to be as special as it gets. 

Theme picked, decorations bought (or made) in time, presents bought and wrapped well in advance. But what is the "pièce de résistance" of every party if not the birthday cake?

Obviously Andromeda is still too young to have a store bought cake, or any cake that contains high amounts of unnecessary sugar and preservatives. All the food she has been consuming ever since she started solids has been sugarless or made with naturally occurring sugars, so we really had no choice but to make our own "healthy" version of a birthday cake, one she would enjoy and consume gladly but wouldn't give me nightmares at night.

That means I went on a hunt for a recipe. And let me tell you, there are loads out there!

We ended up picking three recipes, each for a different reason, all made with healthy ingredients, and the experimentation started. I used half the proposed amounts to make small batches, baked all three through the course of two weeks and gave them to Andromeda to see which one she'd go for. There was one she seemed to like a little bit more than the other two, but there wasn't much enthusiasm shown to any of the cakes in particular. By that time I felt I knew what the best cake flavour combination would be for her and how to produce it, so I ditched the other recipes and made my own! And guess what? Andromeda liked that one the most!

How did I make our Birthday Smash Cake?

First of all, I decided that the flavour I was going to go for was a banana-apple combination. Andromeda likes both of them equally and I knew it would produce a nice white sponge. 

I started by making a homemade applesauce, with a little bit of maple syrup to sweeten. Once it was ready I left it on one side to cool (you don't want to add it in your mix while it's still hot) and started with the rest of my ingredients. I used plain white flour (but you can use whole wheat if you like),  mashed my banana - make sure it's really ripe to add even more natural sweetness to your cake! - added the milk and the rest of the ingredients and mixed. 

I made the cake using a 4'' springform pan that we bought from Amazon especially for the occasion. The amount of batter made is enough for two little sponges, perfect if you want to put one on top of the other and create a rather tall smash cake. 

The icing for our cake was a twist to what we usually do when we make cheesecake in this house. We started with some whipping cream, added a little bit of maple syrup for some sweetness and once we were getting soft peaks, we incorporated some cream cheese in order to make the mix stable enough to pipe. Last but not least, we used food colouring to get the desired baby pink colour, but you can also use beetroot juice, it will have the same effect!

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup of plain white flour

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1 very ripe banana

• 1/2 cup applesauce

• 1/4 cup whole milk

• 1 egg

Frosting

• 1 cup whipping cream

• 1 tbsp maple syrup

• 1/2 cup cream cheese

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius (conventional oven/ 160 on air).

1. Make the applesauce and set aside to cool.

1. Butter and flour the 4'' springform pan.

1. In a mixing bowl add all your dry ingredients, stir and set aside.

1. Once the applesauce has cooled down, put it in a blender with the banana and mix until pureed.

1. Whisk together the puree, milk and egg. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and carefully stir until just combined. 

1. Pour half of the batter on the pan and bake for about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

1. Allow the cake to cool completely on a wire rack.

1. Pour the whipping cream into a big bowl and beat on high until you get soft peaks. 

1. Add the maple syrup, food colouring and cream cheese and fold until you get the desired colour and consistency of your mix. Refrigerate until ready to use.

1. Use a small amount of frosting on the bottom cake layer to secure it on the cake base, then continue frosting the rest of the cake. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

We wanted to make rosettes for Andromeda's cake but unfortunately the house was too hot and the frosting was getting looser and thus harder to pipe. Our end result was a bit more on the messier side, but let's be honest, she didn't know any difference, right?