Babys 1St Birthday Coming Soon....

Maybe try making a cake with splenda. The package tells you how to sub splenda for the sugar. I hope this helps.

Hi Kimberley,

I too like to restrict my son's sugar intake, although, for his birthdays, I let go and let him have the traditional cake. I personally am more concerned about the chemicals in sugar substitutes like Splenda, etc. and prefer sweeteners like honey, fruit,or some of the other organic sugars. As far as frosting goes, you could make a fruit sweetened frosting such as: 1 (8 oz) pkg cream cheese
1/4 cup frozen pineapple juice concentrate or canned crushed pineapple (or any other fruit)
1/4 cup ground cashews and/or other nuts (optional)
Mix in a blender/processor

I also like the cool whip idea too.
I have a great book called "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron, that I got the above recipe from. There are tons of recipes for high nutrition, low junk foods for babies, toddlers, and the whole family. There are lots of ideas for crafts, low cost tips for birthdays etc.
Good Luck and have fun!
M.

For my daughter's first, I had the same reservations...I made a very basic "frosting" with heavy cream and powdered sugar that I mixed myself to control the amount. The cake will need to be stored in the fridge, and it's not sugar free, but it certainly beats the stor made. You could also try "allrecipes.com" and see if they have any sugar free options. Good luck, I applaud you for trying to keep sugar out of your daughter's diet. I often feel like the freak for doing so...

Awww, why not let her have a real cake for her 1st B-day. She probably won't eat much of it anyway. My little girl just turned one and had her own cake, and I don't think any of it actually went IN her mouth! LOL
Anyway, if you are dead set against the sugar, this is what I do for my "diet".
1 tub of Cool Whip Free
1 packet (the smaller one) Fat Free Sugar Free Jello Pudding You can make the Jello any flavor you like. I like chocolate or vanilla and I add a some crushed pinapple sometimes.
Stir it all together and you have a yummy frosting.

Sugarless frosting:
5 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
Cook flour and milk together in a saucepan until thick. It will look like starch. While flour mixture is cooling, mix together:
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup Crisco
1/3 cup cream cheese
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
Beat until fluffy, then add cool flour mixture, beat.

Carrot Cake
2 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
4 eggs
1 cup honey
1 1/8 cup vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups finely shredded carrots
1/3 cup drained canned pineapple pureed in blender
Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon in a medium sized bowl. Mix thoroughly. Beat eggs with honey in a large bowl with a wire wisk or rotary beater until light. Gradually beat in oil until thoroughly combined. Add dry ingredients, stirring until well blended. Stir in carrots. Pour into a well-greased angel food cake tube pan. Bake at 300 for one hour or until top springs back when lightly pressed with fingertip. Cool ten minutes before removing from pan.

These are really yummy, and you would never know there wasn't sugar.
A.

While I am not a strict sugar restrictor we do use fruits instead of candy and splenda often in replace of sugar. My son is dairy intolorant so that limits the cool whip idea but, if only for special events I think a bit of frosting is ok. Funny tidbit-My son (at 2 1/2) never just says cake its always "birthday cake" thats how often we have it. Only on birthdays LOL! Happy First Birthday! OH, also, your child will not remember this so its really for you and the family and the pictures, any special something will work at this age. Jen

I got a frozen cake from Baskin Robbins for my 1-year old. They offer vanilla frozen yogurt as an option. I got him the individual size for his own personal cake and a bigger chocolate ice cream cake for the adult guests. He loved it!

I have a few great ideas, however, they do contain fruit sugar. If you are interested: yogurt with apple juice concentrate, soft tofu blended with apple juice concentrate or mashed banana and lastly, soaked walnuts, cashews, or almonds ground into a paste with pineapple or applejuice concentrate. You could also try stevia or agave. Both natural sweeteners.

I also was going to suggest cool whip. I would check with her pediatrician/doctor before using sugar substitutes. Some may not be safe or suitable for babies/young children. Most cool whip even the regular (non sugar free) has very few carbs or sugar. You can also look into low carb options in the store for cake mix and frostings and see if the ingredients are safe for little ones.

I don't know if this helps, but I switched to Splenda. We hve 10-1/2 yr. & 8-yr. girls and only our youngest is prone to cavities. My uncle/aunt have a dental ofc. in Seattle so my 3 younger brothers and I grew up on little to no sugar. Also, my father is diabetic. We were allowed some candy on 10/31. My mom also switched to Splenda. A lot of people tell me they prefer Splenda over Equal/NutraSweet.

One of the layers in my wedding cake was banana. My husband had choc. Our anniv. cake was spice.
I don't like sugar either for our family.

We had a Pooh 1st b-day for our now 10-1/2 yr. old. Best wishes for a memorable, 1st B-day!

The cream cheese and powered sugar frosting can be made just as well with honey or 100% fruit juice mixed in instead of the powered sugar. I never feed my daughter anything that has sugar or fake sugar or food coloring and we are vegetarian and eat very little dairy =) Yes I am one of the crazy people. But if you want to go healthy there was a responce down below with some great tofu or mushed nut Ideas!

Three cheers to healthy kids.
There is also this great book called "Healthy Child, Whole Child" Check it out if you war interested *smile*

I use sugar free cool whip and sugar free instant chocolate or vanilla pudding. It's delicious. Use the vanilla if you are going to "decorate" meaning "draw" on the cake. My children are older now and still LOVE it. One box of pudding to one tub of cool whip.

if you want to bake the cake yourself, splenda is an awsome replacement for sugar, it tastes just as good, but its calorie free and it won't get your baby all hyped up. a couple really great recipe sites are nestle.com and cdkitchen.com. if you don't already have a recipe, you could definatly find one at one of these sites, and possibly find one that already has substituted ingredients. good luck.

you could make one with stevia (a natural sugar substitute) or splenda. Butter cream is really easy to make. Check on foodnetwork.com for recipes. bet they even have one that is made with splenda or stevia.

S. P

Maybe instead of buying or baking an entire cake you can make or buy cupcakes instead. A smaller portion will limit her sugar intake, and you could even put a candle on it!! I always felt that as long as you use it in moderation it would be ok! Have FUN!

I thought about that a lot before my son's 1st b-day, too. I had NEVER given him anything with sugar. I don't like the idea of sugar substitutes, too many chemicals! I ended up just getting a regular cake, and only giving him a very small piece. I kinda caved, but it worked out OK.

But, I still hardly give him any sugar. He still eats tons of fruits and vegetables every day. Most of his foods are homemade, fruit and vegetable based, and he eats chicken, tofu, cheese, yogurt, etc. I give him lots of organic stuff. About the only sugar he gets these days is in his organic cookies, or instant oatmeal (fruit & cream). **I am just mentioning this so you know that he's "gone back" to virtually no sugar without a fuss**

I don't think it'd be too hard, though, to find a recipe, or a bakery, for an organic, or no-sugar, or lower sugar cake. You could look online. There are some recipes, I think, that use applesauce, so that'd be a more natural sugar. Those cakes are SUPER moist, too!!

There is a product called xylitol. It is sugar from wood that is not metabolized as sugar. It is totally natural and sweeter than sugar. I actually made a chocolate cake tonight with xylitol and used about half the amount as i would have used of sugar. Xylitol has positive effects on the immune system and on tooth enamel. you can get xylitol at daily grind, whole foods, wild oats.
My favorite kind of frosting on chocolate cake is cream cheese.
You can make frosting with peanut butter, or drizzly icing with cherries or other fruits. You can whip your own cream with or without sugar or xylitol and add some fruit on top.
Yummy.

I know this won't help in terms of the frosting situation, but I just wanted to say that I feel your pain! I'm not completely against sugar, but when it comes to our little ones, they just don't need that much. My son's 1st birthday party is tomorrow and I am fretting the cake time. I just don't want his little body on a ridiculous sugar high. He's not used to getting a ton of sugar all day everyday like some kids:( What I plan to do about the amount of cake he consumes, is I'm going to feed him a regular snack or meal about an hour before it's cake time. That way he won't gorge himself on too much cake because he won't really be hungry. I know he will eat a good little amount, but at least there won't be just cake in his belly. Most kids, even if it tastes like heaven to them (ie sugar!) will stop before they too overly gorge themselves. Hope this helps and good luck!

I've never tried this, but how about a little cool whip. I think it even comes in a sugar free or fat free kind. I know they have french vanilla, and you could put a little food coloring in it to make it special. ???????

In my opinion regular sugar in moderation is better than artifical sweeteners that have nothing natural about them. I did angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream for my daughters first birthday. A little bit of whipped cream made for some really cute cake eating pictures. I hope the birthday goes well.

When my daughter turned one I used a recipe from the book “What to Expect...for the first year". It from the series of "What to Expect when you're Expecting" I'm not sure if I am getting the titles correct. You can pick these up at any book store. Anyway, they have a recipe for the first Birthday cake that has carrots, raisins and is sweetened with apple juice concentrate. The frosting was cream cheese sweetened with Apple juice concentrate as well. It was pretty good and healthy too. Good Luck