Six Healthy Birthday Cakes
The cake is always the star of a birthday party, especially for kids!
Making a home-made cake means you can control what’s in it, it won’t cost you an arm and a leg and has the special ingredient – mum love! ♥
Check out these six fabulous ideas for healthier birthday cakes. I personally think they are yummier than the sweet, sickly rich cakes.
If you want a bigger cake, double the recipe and stack two on top of each other or bake in a large rectangular pan.
I also have some healthy icing and decoration options for you.
Healthy Chocolate Birthday Cake (aka Sonia’s Chocolate Yoghurt Cake)
Easy Healthy Cake by Georgia at Well Nourished
Strawberry Cake by Tash at Fur Kids and Food.
Chocolate and Beetroot Birthday Cake by Jude Blereau at Whole Food Cooking
Gluten-Free Thyme and Lemon Cake with Vanilla Bean Frosting by Kelly Gibney
Grain, dairy and refined sugar free birthday cake by Urban Poser
Fresh Fruit Watermelon Cake by Apron Strings
You might also like to try my Rich Chocolate Cake, Banana Breads, Coconut Hummingbird Cake or the Crio Bru Chocolate Fruit Cake.
Can you tell I love cake?
♥ Healthier Icing
Icing or frosting usually is a heap of icing sugar! Tasty but not so healthy! Here are some other options that still taste great but are a bit healthier.
Cream cheese with honey
Fresh organic cream
Marscapone cheese mixed with pureed berries and honey to taste
Avoid food colouring if you can – that’s where all the nasty additives hide. Source some natural food colourings like Hoppers just make your own natural food colourings.
To make an easy chocolate icing, add a couple of spoons of raw cacao, Superfoods for Kidz Berry Choc Chunk powder or melted dark chocolate and mix with cream, cream cheese or whipped coconut cream.
♥ Healthier Cake Decorations
Fresh fruit is always a winner. Use cookie cutters to make fun shapes.
Hoppers make a range of natural sprinkles that are free from artificial colours and flavours
Chopped nuts
Fresh flowers
Natural Confectionery Company lollies (still sugar but there is no artifical stuff)
Organic Times Gems (a healthier Smartie)
You can also decorate with non-edible items like toys (just take them off before you eat!). A couple of my kid’s favourite cakes have been a dolly varden, a cake with Bob the Builder toy and bulldozer and a cake with a Steve Irwin doll, plastic trees and a few Natural Confectionery Company crocodiles!
Sparklers are not so great as the metal flakes they give off are not safe to ingest. If you want to use birthday candles, beeswax are the safest option.
I would love to hear your ideas and tips for making a healthier birthday cake. You can upload your photos to my Facebook Page, Natural New Age Mum.
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I am totally drooling and now starving for a piece of cake…can’t wait until Sunday…I might just indulge in one of these x
Yes I agree with Kirstin – cake cake cake!!! MMmmmm.
I wanted to ask what the deal is with rapadura sugar and how that compares to white sugar?
rapadura is dehydrated sugar cane juice, it hasn’t had all the heavy processing of white sugar and had goodness stripped out of it… it’s a much better way to eat sugar… take a look at this video….http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezHj8QnYbbA
Just wondering – can you replace the sugar (and a bit of the liquid) with some apple puree instead??
I have a choc brownie recipe that uses apple puree and not sugar, and its sweet enough
It depends on the recipe. I love using apple puree, but sometimes it’s too wet to do a straight swap in recipes 🙂
you can do it! x
Oh my god Sonia, you are amazing! Thanks for this share, with a first bday coming up in this house, will make one of these cakes and proudly take a photo for you!! X
I am sure little fella will love it!
What a lovely post.
I never thought about the candles!
thanks Rebbeca… I didn’t either until I started thinking more about it!!! eeeek!
Am now contemplating making cake at 10pm. What a fabulous collation!
Sharing x
thanks Alexx – they are all fabulous!
Perfect timing! I have to make a cake for Mr Three to take to play school and I was feeling the pressure to make something highly coloured and cut into a ridiculously difficult shape. I’m inspired now to stick to my guns. Your coconut hummingbird cake is the bomb and that is what I’ll be making this week. Thanks Sonia!
Jo, don’t succumb!! In fact I have a terrific quote from another blogger about this coming up about expectations. Do your own thing and be proud. Would love to see a piccy! 🙂
they all look so delicious and man those figs on top of Kristin’s cake look amazing
Don’t they? Her food styling is amazing – she should be working for a magazine!
Another shape you can make for a boy thats quite easy to do is a race track!
I did this a few years ago for the boys, and I made 1 square cake, and 1 round cake.
The square cake went in the middle, and the round cake went in half, one piece at each end to make an oval.
(actually, this can also be a base for any oval cake – ice skating rink anyone??? Footy field????, Sports track????)
For the racetrack, although it wasnt all natural, this is what I did:
Whole thing iced in choc icing, then:
Note – The track went in an oval around the outside, wide enough for the 2 cars I had (car shaped candles).
Green sprinkles for the grass in the middle, where I put the podium and a trophy.
I also made some home-made choc racing cars from a mold, that I stuck all around the side of the cake.
From memory, I also piped white icing along the race track to make ‘lanes’
As long as my kids don’t do the “awe mum that looks rubbish!” I’ll still keep baking and decorating the kids cakes myself LOL
Dinosaur last year, knights and dragons castle the year before, and Batman cakes the year before that
you are a superwoman! you can make healthy icing and green coconut works a treat too 🙂
I knew you’d have a healthy option from the green sprinkles LOL!
you know it!! 😉
Hi, just came across your blog and love it! My nearly 4 yr old has her birthday coming up this weekend and I wanted to try out Sonia’s chocolate cake. Do you think I can freeze it? I can only do it today or tomorrow and the party is on Sunday…
Thanks for the great recipes!
Yes Brigitte – this is the cake I do all the time and it is always frozen in advance! It defrosts beautifully. Come back and let me know how you go!!! 🙂
I love it, such good ideas! I love (personally) making and eating Sugar Free icings & frostings.
The easiest icing I make
1 avocado
1/3 cup agave syrup
1 tblsp raw organic cacao powder
1 tblsp coconut oil
vanilla
You can leave out the cacao powder if you don’t want it chocolate (it will be a green color from the avocado). If you want a different color swap out the avocado for strawberries (for a pink color).
YUM! I’m going to go make cake!
Yay! Thanks Rebekah – fab idea 🙂
So, it’s nearly midnight and I just found this post, and now I’m hungry!!
uh oh!!
Do you know much about Dextrose as a substitute for sugar? I’m wondering if it is ok for the kiddies, especially ones with a artificial sugar free diet.
I don’t Serina, sorry! If it’s heavily processed, I tend to give things like that a miss.
Dextrose is simply ALL glucose molecules. It’s not quite as sweet tasting as table sugar (sucrose) which is a glucose molecule and a fructose molecule stuck together.
For kids with fructose malabsorption the women’s and children’s hospital actually recommends dextrose as the “sugar” of choice and to actually “spike” recipes with dextrose to help even out the fructose/glucose ratio as glucose helps the body to deal with fructose (which is metabolically hard work and a bit nasty.)
Just made the Chocolate yoghurt cake – it’s my first baking exercise using healthy ingredients…. It was absolutely beautiful. I am on an absolute high and can’t wait to do more healthy lunchbox baking for my kids and rest and relax knowing they are eating well at school. Can’t wait to explore more recipes :))
Clare! Sohappy !!! This cake is one of our family’s all time faves !! So glad you liked it. Healthy eating definitely doesn’t mean no yumminess!
I made a soccer field birthday cake for my son’s 6th birthday party. My usual cake baked ingrediants are almond meal, rapadura sugar, dark chocolate and fruit. On this occassion I made him a themed cake with a butter cake recipe without artificial colours, preservatives and additives. I can’t wait to try the yoghurt cake and I like the idea of natural beeswax candles. Thanks for all the tips.
thanks for stopping by Zena – great tips 🙂
Such a fun,easy recipe!! Thnx for sharing,I was looking for healthy birthday ideas cuz my mom’s bday is next week 🙂
Definiteley gonna try this for her!!
Thank you sooooo much.
Blessings xo
Let me know how you go Jimena xxx
Thank you so much NNAM 🙂
I made your choc yoghurt cake for my little one’s 2 nd bday.
Kids loved it! ! Had no idea it was a “healthy” cake. I topped it with the avocado choc icing. Scoffed every crumb! Hubby and I enjoyed it a lot too. Thank you very much. Enjoying your posts and healthier eating ideas! Keep those great recipes coming. Looking forward to doing your carrot cake/slice next. .
Thanks Yana!! woohoo… the kids never know it’s healthy… he he!! 🙂
hi
how is the texture of the yogurt cake? I’m looking for a 1st birthday cake to use for a smash the cake shoot, so it will need to be easily smashed by little hands and taste yummy which it certainly looks like it does!
It’s probably a bit dense for that Tamryn. There are some other ideas on this post. The choc banana cake is probably the best texture for a light and fluffy cake. https://naturalnewagemum.com/six-healthy-birthday-cakes/
Hi, did you end up making that strawberry cake? I see the directions are to use a thermomix. Does that translate easily to an oven?
Hiya Lindsay, the thermomix is only to mix, both ways you can cook in the oven. You simply just mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and whack into the oven – so easy! I actually made it this weekend! Yum 🙂
Wondering if you’ve tried doubling the proportions of the chocolate yoghurt cake and if so, how did it go?
Hi Jan, yes! It doubles really easily!
Hi there! This may be a silly question, but how does one line a round cake tin with paper (do you mean parchment paper? I don’t know what baking paper is). Thanks!! I’m not a baker but my kiddo is turning 2.
Hi Jennifer… yes, I guess parchment paper is another word for it! It’s so the cake doesn’t stick. x
Hi,
My six year old daughter made your chocolate yoghurt cake on the weekend and it turn out lovely. I wanted to ask, have you tried this with just vanilla and without cocoa? Just trying to think of other variations.
HI Anna, No I haven’t but I think if you just increased the flour to cover the cocoa it would work okay. So glad you liked it. 🙂