Convert-a-Cake: The art of making a sugarless cake for your baby

Active cooking time: 20 minutes 

Baking time: 30-35 minutes

Cooking is about being innovative, but I once believed baking was different - written in stone and not to be tampered if you didn’t want to end up with a dense blob of hardened batter. But I was wrong. I discovered this a few months ago, when Cai stopped eating bananas . It came without warning – one day he didn’t like them, the next day he didn’t like them any better, and the day after that he decided it would be fun to mash some into his hair. Days passed. Fruit ripened. And there they were, six lonely, mushy bananas, all dressed in black and no place to go. I decided to throw them a party and make them into a cake. I used one of my mother’s apple cake recipes, omitting the sugar, replacing the white flour with whole wheat, and adding unsweetened applesauce, date syrup and some cardamom. It was Cai’s first cake. He liked it so much that "cake" became one of his first words, often requested with ever-hopeful enthusiasm. I’ve made many since, each one different. Below I am post one such recipe, but invite you to not follow it.

3 eggs

3/4 cup water

2 cups whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsweetened apple sauce

1/2 cup unsweetened date syrup

2 bananas, mashed

2 apples, finely chopped

“Baby leftover” fruit peel [optional]

Vegetable oil to grease pan

Beat eggs together. Add water and all the dry ingredients – flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cardamom and salt and mix together. Add the apple sauce, date syrup and fruit. Mix, and pour into pan lightly greased with vegetable oil. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes.