Vegan Smash Cake :)

My little baby turned 1! It was an exciting and fun celebration for us.  It was also a little crazy on my end because I wanted him to have the smash cake experience but I didn't want him to have any of the cake!

I contemplated doing just a vegetable or fruit, such as an apple.  I researched raw desserts like crazy but, as raw desserts always have nuts as a base, I didn't want to take the chance of some sort of nut reaction.  Now, my baby up until about 1 month ago, has been exclusively breastfed.  He hasn't shown much interest in food until recently and so now we have introduced foods that we can give him that are as much in their raw natural state as possible - specifically fruits.  Out of curiosity we let him try something (now I can't remember what it was) other than fruit or veggie and he didn't care for it.  So with that in mind, I decided to make him a cake because I didn't think he would have any interest in putting any in his mouth anyway.

I actually did two different recipes.  One for his 1 year pictures and one for his birthday party.

I ended up going with a vegan carrot cake recipes that didn't have any sugar in it.  

In this picture, I used the 'Single Lady Cupcake' recipes called Five Minute Carrot Cake from Chocolate Covered Katie.  Her desserts look delish and I thought this carrot cake would have a super cute look paired with my kiddos outfit.  As expected, he didn't care to eat it, he only cared to swirl the stuff on the ground with the candle :)   I used Coconut Milk frosting instead of some vegan soy crap.  I had to do a bit of experimenting with that one, too and I'll have another post on that.

For his big birthday bash I made him a big smash cake.  Although in hind sight I kind of wish I wouldn't have worried about the cake itself since I already knew he wouldn't eat it and just worried about what was on top.  Instead I worried about both.  

For this cake, I used a recipe found on this blog.  I made a little variation and used the rest of my spelt flour instead of wheat flour and I made it into a cake using a round cake pan instead of going with the cupcakes.  I  wasn't too impressed with the taste though (I stole a bite after the smashing was done - hence why I wish I wouldn't have worried about having actual cake under that frosting - it ended up being a waste).  I was, however, super happy with my raw chocolate icing found on one of my favorite raw dessert websites, The Rawtarian.  You can find this particular recipe here and I liked it a lot because it was so simple and made with ingredients I already had on hand. It's creamy and has a dark chocolate taste which normally I wouldn't care for but Husband and I wanted to keep on licking. It also spread incredibly easy. 

Again, my baby wasn't too into smashing.  He was a little curious but I think he has a thing about getting super dirty!  He had to have help from some kiddos to get a little dirtier :)  I thought he would actually like eating this frosting because I let him lick a little off the spatula when I made it and he was really into it.  However, when I helped him out and put some in his mouth, he gagged.  Not the first time he'd done that but   I promise it wasn't because the recipe sucked cuz it didn't..or doesn't!

Hopefully someone else finds this information a little useful.  :)