Last week, I whipped up a quick and simple yogurt bundt cake for a friend's birthday, in a super flurry before my little one and I ran out to the gym, where we would see her. Brought that hot out of the oven cake right into the gym. A gym without a cake is a safe place. A birthday without a cake is a sad thing. She works there, so we brought it along. But making a cake with a three year old is tricky business. If the three year old does not get to eat the cake, it is a bit like torture. Even though he got to lick the spoon and the bowl. And we were invited to go over our friends house after nap time to try the cake, which was delicious.
(Here's the recipe for the yogurt cake, 4th one down on the page. Really nice. I think I used 3/4 C of sugar to cut down a little bit. http://chinadoll-bakingdairy.blogspot.com/search/label/Cakes)
So, he wanted was his own birthday cake. "It is not Nikki's birthday! It is my birthday!" Yes, I know, you are three. Every day is your birthday. And everyone else's birthday is yours. I know. "I want an astronaut cake for my birthday!" Of course you do.
So, why not. It's not like we had anything better to do than bake a cake. I mean, another cake. Our days at home this winter are so lack luster, I must say. He takes a long, fantastic nap in the middle of the day which I wouldn't trade for anything because it gives me time to rest my brain. But when he gets up it's nearing dark and it takes him some time to wake and be ready to "do" something. So, they are funky days. We bake cakes. We eat cakes. I usually eat too much of the cake and then throw it away or make my husband bring it to work. I never wonder why I can't lose those last five pounds of post baby weight. I know exactly why.
Even though his birthday is in July and we then talked about having an astronaut party at the campsite where we'll be for his birthday, we were going to need to make an astronaut cake right away. You know, to practice. He is still wondering when we are going to cook hot dogs at the campsite for his birthday party. I will do a lot of things for this kid, like bake and eat many cakes, but I will not go camping in January.
First thing we had to decide was what flavor cake would it be? After listing many flavors he jumped on ginger bread. A ginger bread cake with frosting. It would look like the moon and we would put astronauts on it. So I found a recipe for ginger cake that looked pretty good. Here is the recipe for the cake. It turned out to be really good. My husband loved it, I love it and of course the little guy just wanted to eat the frosting. He ate the cake too, but mostly the part that had the frosting attached to it.
* I used whole wheat pastry flour, I did not have candied ginger so I omitted that, I left out the pepper too since it was for a little guy, although I bet it would be really good with it in there, I replaced the vegetable oil with coconut oil, and I used 1/2 C molasses and 1/2 C honey instead of the sugar.*
The frosting, I had to make up with things I had in the fridge and cabinets. It was not great but it was okay. I learned you can add flour to frosting to thicken it instead of powdered sugar. White flour is okay but oat flour is not. You can also add cornstarch. Too much yogurt will make your icing too runny. You know, experiment frosting. By the time it resembled frosting, I had so much of it, it was ridiculous. I had a great sort of healthy recipe for frosting somewhere but it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of bookmarks, pins and cookbooks. The frosting had powdered sugar in it which kicked my ass. I ate spoonfuls of it. Dumb crack sugar. I was able to slowly throw it away. I should know better.
And here is the pretty cake we made. And the little love who requested it.
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