An Elmo themed vanilla birthday cake (whole wheat, eggless, natural colors)

What’s special about this cake? Not just that it is for a cute little munchkin, a friend’s kid who loves Elmo.

This is my first vanilla-flavored birthday cake. I was able to decorate it with no synthetic food colors, just homemade plant-based colors!  Using natural colors was not a criterion, but I wanted to see if it could be worked out. My friend only wanted a non-chocolate cake, and so I took this opportunity to optimize a recipe for a basic vanilla whole wheat cake.

Till yesterday, I did not think it was possible to get a bright red color in frosting. Tried boiled cranberries, but it did not work. I have used natural pink color from beets before, and read on the internet that it can make red too. It was time to test that! I juiced a beet and reduced the juice by boiling, and voila! There it was, a nice red frosting with the humble beet.

What about Elmo’s orange color nose? Surely carrots would work, wouldn’t they? Yes, they did. 🙂 And they both taste delicious!

Wait, what about the black? Any amount of chocolate yields only brown. And guess what came to my rescue, while I was frantically searching for a natural black color… black-strap molasses! This discovery really made me giddy with joy. 🙂

This white cake can be easily made vegan by substituting regular yogurt with soy yogurt.

Folks at Fiesta Friday #41 party, there’s one more cake that we can party with, as guilt-free as I could make it. Hope Angie and co-hosts Nancy and Loretta like it as much as we do!

Elmo themed vanilla cake

• Difficulty: medium
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Ingredients: 

For basic 8″ square vanilla cake:

dry:

whole wheat pastry flour- 2 cup

sugar- 3/4 cup

baking powder- 1  1/2 tsp.

baking soda- 1/2 tsp.

wet:

yogurt- 1 cup (2% or fat free)

canola oil- 1/2 cup

vanilla- 1 1/2 tsp.

Method:

* Combine dry ingredients in a bowl.

* Mix wet ingredients in another bowl, add dry to wet in portions.

* Bake at 350 °F for 35 minutes or till a knife inserted in the middle comes clean.

Ingredients for frosting:

organic Spectrum shortening- 2 cups

powdered sugar- about 2 lb.

water- as needed

colors:

red – beet juice concentrate

orange- carrot juice concentrate

black- melted dark chocolate and black-strap molasses

brown- cocoa powder