Sofia's first birthday cake, sugar and flour free chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and chocolate soil

First birthdays are so special. For me it's about celebrating the child's life, acknowledging the little person as they transition from babyhood to childhood, and a whole community comes together to show their love.

I feel that a first birthday cake should be special too. But its only fair the baby can eat her own birthday cake, so it has to be free of processed flours and sugars. I've searched long and hard for the perfect recipe, and finally I found it.

It's a GAPS recipe, which is inherently free from junk, but I was able to change it slightly to meet my cake fantasies! The changes rendered it no longer strictly GAPS, but it was still flour and sugar free. 

The original recipe came from the wonderful Eleanor at petite kitchen. I fell in love with her delicious spiced date and ginger cake the first time I baked it. It was nice and high, so it presents well. It was quick, easy and thermomix friendly, but most of all it was versatile! Perfect birthday cake qualities!

Once I had played with it a few times I came up with the following recipe alterations to render it a chocolate cake. 

2 cups ground almonds (I use whole organic almonds and grind them in the thermomix)

1 cup pitted medjool dates, soaked 2 hours

5 eggs

1/3 cup raw cacao (or more if you like it really chocolatey)

1/3 cup rice malt syrup 

2 tsp vanilla paste
1 tsp baking soda

Pinch salt

So all I've done is swap the honey for rice malt syrup and add raw cacao. I used rice malt syrup because many of our guests are fructose intolerant, so I needed a glucose based sweetener, however if you want you could use maple syrup. I find honey a distinctive flavour that doesn't marry well with chocolate.

The ingredients are blitzed in a blender and baked at 160 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

I baked this recipe 3 times to make Sofia's cake, because I wanted to layer it up with cream cheese frosting and carve it into a flower pot shape. Sofia loves the garden. She thinks soil is delicious! I thought it'd be funny to bake her a flower pot cake with chocolate soil and see her scoop up a fistful, the way she tries to eat the real thing! (the chocolate soil was made with sugar free dark chocolate, raw cacao and medjool dates, whizzed together in the thermomix til it looks like soil.)

Here is the result of our efforts, a flour and sugar free chocolate flower pot cake, frosted with cream cheese and rice syrup frosting, coloured with raw cacao and natural food dyes.