The Cake Mistake

Last Saturday we had a double Birthday Party for the boys! Thanks to my sheer awesomeness, I forgot to invite anyone until Thursday night.

Yeah, I know. I rock.

Consequently, it was a family affair with just my parents, the boys, Darrel and myself.

That’s okay, though, because this is the last year the boys might not realize how lame their birthday turned out to be. Besides, my great aspirations for a FANTABULOUS allergy and fructose friendly birthday cake kind of went *splat*.

After the sadness of Zac’s first birthday passing without a smash cake, I was on a mission: I was going to make Jed a gorgeous, delicious, SAFE birthday cake!

I read blogs, recipes, and books. I made a plan.

What I didn’t do, thanks to the frenzy of returning to work, was to do trial runs of this cake before hand. (That’s Mistake #1.)

So the day before the party I made the cake. I made the ice cream cake part. I made the icing. I planned to put it all together first thing in the morning before the party, and I just knew it would be great! I was so excited to be able to share these recipes with you – I knew SOMEONE out there had to be searching for a refined sugar-free icing recipe just like me, and I just KNEW my ‘planned’ recipe would fit the bill perfectly!

Only, it all kind of…didn’t work like I’d planned.

OK. In all fairness, the chocolate cake part turned out AMAZING. Darrel doesn’t even like chocolate cake, and he wanted to eat more of it! So I will (eventually) share that recipe with you because it’s a great allergy-free chocolate cake.

But the rest of it…well. Maybe it’s best if you just see it for yourself.

Yeah. Pretty, huh? Darrel managed to make it look prettier in a sliced photo…

…but it was tough, as the cake was literally melting as he shot photos! Hard to get a nice photo of something oozing all over the plate!

The good news is that I learned as I went. So here’s what I did wrong, and what I’m going to do differently next time. Because, ladies and gents, I am STILL on a mission! I will master a Fructose-friendly, Dairy/Soy/Egg/Peanut/Coconut-Free cake if I have to make eleventy-thousand cakes trying!!

Mistake #1: Not doing a trial run.

Next time I have an important event that I need something special for, I will attempt to make it at least a month in advance to give myself time to work with the recipe if necessary.

The chocolate cake part turned out, as I said, delicious! BUT…it is a very dense, rich cake that turns in to a rock when frozen! As I was aiming for an ice cream cake, that means that – while we love the cake by itself – it isn’t a good cake for this project. I would have known that if I had done a trial run and had time to figure out how to “fluffy up” the cake.

Also, I was so excited by my icing/glaze creation for the Blueberry Muffins because I was just SURE that I could easily turn it into a nice, stiff, spreadable icing for the boys birthday cake. If I had tried to do that earlier, I would have discovered that is easier thought than done! My icing got thicker, sure, but it was still essentially a glaze that rolled – and that was NOT what I was shooting for!

Plus, the maple syrup sweetener created a lovely shade of blah brown in the icing. Attempting to color it using fruit was trickier than I’d thought it would be, and doing a trial run ahead of time would have given me time to find the perfect solution without a deadline hanging over my head.

Mistake #2: Rushing.

I’m not too mad at myself for this one; after all, I had just returned from my first work trip! I was exhausted and drained, both physically and mentally. But rushing this kind of cake doesn’t work.

The ice cream cake part didn’t have enough time in the freezer to really “set”, so it was trying to melt all over as I was assembling things. That makes for a very ugly cake, and one that is very difficult to work with.

Mistake #3: Not reading directions.

The cake was an amalgamation of two different recipes I’d found, with my own tweaks thrown in for good measure. I decided to use ground chia seeds in the cake as an egg substitute, which I have never done before.

I guessed I would need about 3 eggs worth of replacement, and I quickly Googled “chia seeds egg replacer” to figure out what to do. The first link I clicked on said 1 T. of ground chia seeds mixed with 3 T. water replaced 1 egg, so I ran over, measured out 3 T. of chia seeds, threw them in the coffee grinder and let ‘er rip.

And y’all, let me tell you – it took a LOT more than 9 T. of liquid to balance that mess out!

Later that night, as I was reviewing my notes on the recipe and clearing out browsing windows in my computer, I happened to read a little further down on that web page where it said, basically, that the quantity of meal you end up with is LARGER than the quantity of seeds you start with.

So I basically added somewhere between 4-5 “eggs” to the cake without realizing it, because I didn’t bother to read the directions all the way.

Oops.

What I’m Doing Next:

First thing I’m going to do is re-make the cake! I had to do so much tweaking to it as I went, that even though I kept excellent notes, I’m not certain I can replicate the results. That’s why I’m not sharing the recipe with you yet. I don’t want to give you something that isn’t tested. (Besides, I think my boys – Darrel included – would like another chocolate cake!)

Next, the icing needs some serious work. For starters, I’m going to mess around with how to make food coloring out of veggies and fruits until I find the one I like best.

Then there’s the part that is sad for us: we learned that coconut isn’t actually entirely safe for Jed. 

He had been so completely fructose-safe, and on the day of his party he was NUTS. Belligerent, difficult, and fought sleep like a crazy child! Darrel commented that if he didn’t know any better, he’d think that Jed had been fructosed. We thought hard for a few minutes and finally it dawned on me that coconut milk was in almost every part of the cake!

So even though we had thought coconut milk was safe for him, apparently it doesn’t work well for him and it goes back to the no-man’s land of my kitchen cabinets.

I’m really sad about that, y’all. 

It also means that much of my icing creation is going to have to start from scratch. I’m going to experiment with making my own powdered sugar out of dextrose, to begin, but if that doesn’t work I will just have to get REALLY creative!

Also, I’ll re-do the original icing/glaze for the Blueberry Muffins with Almond milk to see if that works. I REALLY hope it does!

As for the ice cream cake part, I went simple: banana ice cream! As I said, though, it didn’t want to stay solid. I don’t know if that’s because I didn’t have enough time to let it freeze all the way, or if it’s something inherent in the banana ice cream. So first I’ll try freezing it for a full day before messing with it, and if that doesn’t solve the problem, I have a few tricks to try to see if I can make a nice, firm ice cream for the cake.

I wish I had some fabulous recipes to share for a fantastic birthday cake, but I don’t. Yet. Keep your eyes open, though, because I have not given up yet and as soon as I master it y’all will be the first to know!

Any bakers out there? Have any tips you can share with us? Please comment!