Birthdays with Allergies

I've found birthday cakes to be one of the tricky parts of having allergies. The dilemma: how to make a cake that you can feed a crowd that is allergy friendly and yummy enough for those without allergies. I've done this a couple different ways.

One is to double my cooking efforts. My son wanted his "normal" chocolate cake. I'm not about to make the kid have a different cake on his birthday just because his sisters and I have food allergies. So for his birthday, I made the Cake Mix Doctor's chocolate cake, having to spit out the batter I absentmindedly licked in order to avoid those gut-wrenching pains. Then I baked some carrot cake muffins from a recipe my sisters created. I plan to bake these sometime even for those without allergies because they are straight-up delicious.



Vegan Gluten-free Carrot Cake Cupcakes

• flax seed mix (recipe below or you can simply use 4 eggs)
• 1 3/4 c. sugar
• 1 c. unsweetened applesauce
• 1 Tbsp. oil 
• 5.2 oz or 145 grams of blanched almond flour*
• 5.2 oz or 145 grams of gluten-free all-purpose four*
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. salt
• 3 c. grated carrots

Flax seed mix:
Stir 4 Tbsp. of ground flax seed with 3/4 c. of water. Let stand at least 10 minutes

Whisk together the flax seed mix, sugar, applesauce, and oil. In a separate bowl, stir together both flours, soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add the wet and dry ingredients together, stirring until just combined; do not over-mix. Gently fold in the grated carrots.

Pour into lined muffin tins and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Be sure not under-bake since it will result in a gummy consistancy.

*One of the tricks to baking with other flours is to add it according to how much it weighs. If you have no food scale, add approximately 1 1/2 cup of almond flour and 1 1/4 cup of the GF all-purpose flour. But for the best results, take the extra step and weigh it.
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The second way to handle the allergy issue was simply to make a cake so yummy that no one could even tell it happened to be missing gluten and dairy. This is what we did for Ava's birthday. You know its good stuff when you're getting compliments on the cake with no one knowing the secret that they were actually eating a healthy cake. The ingredients of this one will totally catch you off guard. A cake made with no sugar, but with lots of black beans...I promise it's good.  You can find that recipe HERE.

Now have a happy birthday with food that makes your body happy, too!