Easy gluten free birthday cake for 20 people

My default is easy, emotional, rustic and quite frankly haphazard. When it, therefore, comes to making a little person’s birthday cake and ‘themes’ are bandied about, I get worried. I won’t use the weirdo icing to get the ‘right’ colours.  I won’t use strange icing pastes to get that super smooth look. It’s just not me. So, for the dinosaur theme, I got to thinking. I also had to think fast because I’d burnt a cake that morning and was running out of time.

This is the cake that was born. It’s quick. It’s easy. It’s gluten free and lower carb and sugar than a regular cake, with the coconut flour components and reduced sugar icing. The icing DOES have actual cane sugar to get the white result without using stiff egg whites in a honey/egg white type combo – some parents take issue with raw egg and I respect that when I’m feeding other people’s kids. One must. If you are strictly fructose free you could use a cashew cream instead or other white sugar free icing, no trouble.

I am pleased to report there were no crazy children in sight post-cake as in the scheme of things, it’s very low sugar. There were satisfied little customers indeed who went back for seconds and didn’t just eat the icing!

Something about making treats for children takes me right back to my grandmère doing so for us as children. I have a little melancholy moment at parties like my son’s on the weekend, wishing she could be here for me to make HER delicious treats.

Enjoy the cake. Bake in a big, lined roasting tin ( I used a 30cm x 25cm tin and it came up about 4cm high once cooked).

So here is the little dinosaur cake. I’m almost embarrassed to show you guys. A bit of a rush job after the first cake burnt in the ‘preheated oven of 250C that never got turned down’. Such a rush job in fact that I forgot to take pics along the way and got this one at the park once it had been a bit knocked around by car trips and a couple of picnic tablecloth flyovers… The joys! A cake nonetheless. If you’re not an elaborate icing person either, all I did here was cut out the shape of a big carnivorous dinosaur (had to be carnivorous, you see) and then placed the piece of paper with the dinosaur ‘hole’ in the centre of the cake, atop the icing gently. I then sprinkled natural green sprinkles I found at About Life (easy to find online) and then peeled back the paper and resmoothed the icing where it had come up a little.

Cut to more recently, I made the chocolate version for my husband’s 40th this weekend just past – HUGE success with kids and adults alike. All you need to do to make into a chocolate cake, is instead of the 1/3 additional GF flour, switch that out to doing 1/3 cup cocoa powder (I prefer Dutch Processed cocoa for baking. Gorgeous, rich flavour and easy to digest!) Then for the icing, I did a simple coconut cream chocolate icing ganache. Bring to the boil 500ml coconut cream. Take off the heat and add in 700g dark chocolate and 100-150g organic icing sugar until it’s all melted in and thick and luscious. If you want it to not have the sugar, just increase your chocolate to 900g so that it’s almost double the cream and still sets thick as in the picture. Once it’s almost cooled, spread it over the cake and pop in the fridge to set for 30 mins. Done.

Hey, presto!

Enjoy the cake. It’s a great tea cake and it’s also great for cutting up and making shapes out of.