Saturday, June 18, 2011

The Birthday Bakery

Today is my son's 4th birthday party and we have lots of his friends and classmates coming over to help us celebrate so I baked up my usual storm for his birthday. This years theme is centered around a moon cake, my son's request, complete with a space shuttle and astronauts an American flag and even star shaped candles. 

  The moon cake. Pin It The cake itself is red velvet with a buttercream frosting. The cake was made using the Wilton baking pan for making a soccer ball (or baseball, basketball, etc) cake pan. 

I also made dozens of these moon cupcakes as we have too many people coming to the party to only serve the moon cake. I thought the flags were a nice, simple touch.
Pin It I also made my first ever sugar-free cupcakes and frosting. A nice golden cake with a chocolate fudge frosting. I did taste the frosting and it is so yummy I could have eaten it till I was sick and my neighbor was my first taste tester of the cupcakes and couldn't believe these were sugar free. They absolutely were as I cleaned the mixer, stand and all, in between making the other cakes and these just to be sure there was no sugar added to these. 

I will say there are so many good Vegan recipes out there that I really don't miss the milk products much and these cupcakes (well the frosting at least) has convinced me that I could give up sugar if I needed too as well. Part of the trick to not missing out on all the stuff you think you will miss is really just learning to cook and bake, that way you have more control over what you eat and know that you aren't getting added things. 

The red velvet and buttercream recipes are from The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes. The sugar-free cupcakes and frosting are from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, there are also gluten-free recipes in there.