No Added Sugar First Birthday Cake and Colorful Dye-Free Frosting

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If you’re looking for a first birthday smash cake without the processed sugar, this is the one! We have done several first birthday cakes and I would say this is the easiest and incredibly tasty. It is sweetened with banana and has a fantastic moist texture. I will admit it is more divine with some chocolate chips added but we skipped those this time to keep it sugar-free for my baby’s birthday. In the past we have done two batches for birthdays: one with and one without chocolate chips so we could enjoy the chocolate one while our baby got some cake too!

My real achievement this time was making a solid frosting without powdered sugar or food coloring. My daughter’s birthday theme was rainbow so we wanted a rainbow cake, but I like to avoid food dye, particularly for a first birthday. Instead, I had the idea of solving both issues—the sugar and color—one way, with freeze-dried fruit. I have used freeze-dried strawberries in the past for a delicious and colorful Valentine’s Day pancake and thought it might work here. It sure did!

Here is the recipe for our sugar-free first birthday cake and frosting colored with freeze-dried fruit!

First Birthday Banana Cake (no added sugar):

3 very ripe mashed bananas

Juice of 1/2 lemon

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ½ cups buttermilk

¾ cup butter 3 cups all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 350. Mix wet ingredients. Add dry ingredients. Combine. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean, about 20-30 minutes.

My toddler has made this cake before. If you want the full video of him making it a year and a bit ago, here is our Youtube video making it!

Cream Cheese Frosting with Freeze-Dried Fruit

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter softened

8 oz cream cheese softened (cream cheese brick)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups freeze-dried fruit powder

Water, as needed to achieve texture

Directions

To use the freeze-dried fruit for color, select freeze-dried fruit that matches the color you want. Raspberry and strawberry make a lovely pink. Blueberry makes a deep purple. Mango makes a light yellow. Taste-wise we all agreed the raspberry strawberry mix was the most delicious. Use more or less as desired for color. We overdid the blueberry a bit and it led to a dark purple. We used less of raspberry and strawberry and got a nice pastel color. Note: for green, we couldn’t find a freeze-dried fruit at the store. Kiwi was my thought but I only found dried, not freeze-dried (make sure any fruit you use is FREEZE-dried). I did find a kiwi powder online which might work. We used pistachio though. It worked but was less sweet than the other colors since it did not have the natural fruit sugar. If anyone tries with kiwi powder I would love to know how it goes!

Using a food processor or high-speed blender, turn your freeze-dried fruit into a powder. If doing multiple colors do one at a time.

Using the paddle attachment on a mixer beat the butter, cream cheese, and vanilla until smooth and creamy. Add in the freeze-dried fruit powder and continue until fluffy. Add more freeze-dried fruit powder or a drop of water to achieve your desired consistency.