a weekend of chocolate birthday cakes (egg-free and whole wheat)

Last weekend, there were 2 birthday parties on consecutive days, one for my friend’s daughter and the other for my daughter who turned five. Since I was the “official”cake baker and decorator, I decided to put all my decorating skills to use. The above cake is themed “Peppa Pig”; the birthday girl loves the show, so the Peppa pig family was ordered from Amazon.com ahead of time. And for the second cake, since my daughter was not particular about a theme, I decided it would be “spring” and made some flowers a few days before the party.

Cake recipe adapted from  food.com 

The other cake for my daughter’s birthday- with the famous Wilton rose (yes, I took the cake decorating classes) and apple blossoms with homemade Royal icing (I figured a way to make it without meringue powder- since I do not consume eggs). The rosette border and drop flowers are made with regular icing.

A 10″ cake double layer cake with spring flowers

peppa pig birthday cake

• Servings: about 40
• Time: 6 hours
• Difficulty: medium
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Ingredients:

Cake (makes one 10″ and one 6″ layer)

whole wheat pastry flour- 2 1/2 cup

dark brown sugar- 2 cup

butter- 8 oz.

fat free milk- 2 cup

vinegar- 1 tbsp.

unsweetened cocoa powder- 3/4 cup

baking powder- 1/2 tbsp.

baking soda- 1/2 tbsp.

salt- 1/4 tsp.

vanilla extract- 1/2 tbsp.

 Filling:

strawberry spreadable fruit (contains no added sugar)

Icing:

Spectrum organic vegetable shortening- 2 cup

powdered sugar- 7 cup

water- approx. 14 tbsp.

food grade colors- blue, green, pink, yellow

 Method:

*  Mix all wet cake ingredients along with melted butter. Preheat oven to 350 °F.

* Combine dry ingredients and add to wet mixture.

* Pour into a 10″ and a 6″ pan lined with parchment paper. Bake for 50 minutes or till knife inserted in the middle comes clean.

* Once the cakes cool, invert, take parchment paper off, and arrange with strawberry filling between layers (use separator plate), and decorate.

This is how the layers look inside with strawberry filling: