Yesterday we celebrated Owen’s 3rd Birthday with a few neighbors. I wanted to wait until Travis was off from work to do this :) – it was nothing elaborate… I didn’t really have the time to invest this year in a big party for him… so it was a simple, round up the neighbors event :) – which is honestly all Owen really wanted. All he asked for was for people to sing him Happy Birthday and to have a donut shaped birthday cake. (can you tell he likes donuts).

Heres some evidence of it….

So, to please him, I did just that.

With our new non-gmo diet (we do splurge just so people don’t put the above image together with it being dunkin haha….), I put forth the effort to make him a 100% organic cake with homemade icing as well. I am patting myself on the back for this one because it came out “awessssomeee” and I even made the milk from fresh raw almonds that was used for the icing. It turned out delish!

For memory sake I thought I would post the recipe for everyone again, this way I can pin it later.

Here goes:

Organic Whole Grain Chocolate Cocoa Cake
(it seriously taste like Betty Crockers Chocolate Cake, so moist!):

Ingredients:

2 cups freshly ground hard white wheat
2/3 cups cocoa
1 1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 2/3 cups Sucanat
4 Eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup. mayonnaise
(healthy kind without added sugar)
1 1/3 cups water

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 350.

Mix Flour, Cocoa, Baking Soda & Powder together in bowl.

In an additional large bowl, with mixer at high speed, beat sugar, eggs & vanilla for 3 minutes, or until light and fluffy.

At low speed, beat in mayonnaise.

Add flour mixture into mixing bowl (with the egg mixture) – slowly… a 1/2 cup at at time or so…. alternating with water, until both water and flour are gone.

Once mixed (it will be very watery) – spray pan with oil (or butter), pour into your pan or pans. This cake was a bunt style pan, so I had to bake two cakes using the batch of mix I made up. This typically would make a traditional 9×13 size cake. You could easily use it in cup cakes too though.

Bake @ 350 F for 30-35 minutes, or until cake toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool for about 10 minutes….

Now for the icing….

Ingredients:

5 Tablespoons White Hard Wheat Flour (you could use all-purpose)
1 cup almond milk (I made my own – will post that recipe below too)
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 cup Unsalted Butter
1 cup Organic Sugar Cane (You could use regular white sugar, but not powdered!)

Directions:

In a small sauce pan whisk flour into milk and medium heat. Stir it until it thickens. It will thicken as it heats and eventually turn into a brownie thick mixture.

Once thickened, remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. If you tend to be impatient like me, you can stick the pan in the fridge to speed up the cooling process.

While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter (I melted mine slightly for 45 seconds in the microwave) and mix in sugar until light and fluffy. The sugar/butter mixture should not look very grainy when you finish mixing it :).

Then add the cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat the heck out of it. I set mine on speed 10 in my kitchen aid mixture for about 5 minutes? Or until it looked fluffy and thick.

and, thats it! I just used a spatula and lathered up my cake. :)

Now for the Homemade Almond Milk:
*you obviously could use regular store almond milk or even cow’s milk, any MILK will work*

Ingredients:

1 Cup Raw Almonds
(Organic if possible)
4 Cup’s Filtered Water
Vanilla
Organic Blue Agave Nectar
(or honey)
Glass Jar’s to store in.

Directions:

At night, put your 1 cup of raw almonds into a large bowl and fill it with water. Don’t skimp on the water btw, the almonds will soak up the water… so you don’t want to put “to little” in the bowl.

After 8 hours or in the morning, drain off the water from almonds, then place the almonds into your blender. Before blending, add in your 4 cups of filtered water.

Mix on high until the almonds are completely blended… my Ninja Blender will actually turn the almonds into powder.

Then after mixed, you pour your mixture into a strainer lined with cheese cloth (you could use a thin towel too). Pour it in slowly, allowing the milk to strain through the cheese cloth. Once you have emptied the entire pitcher of milk/almond mill mixture, you can squeeze the cheese cloth or towel to help speed up the process. Once liquid is totally strained out, you would then mix in 1 Tsp or so of Agave and a half teaspoon of vanilla. You obviously can add more or less depending on your taste preference. You then just store the milk in glass jars. Just be sure to use it within a week or so. Because this is totally fresh, it wont last much longer than that.

Oh, and save the almond flour in the cheese cloth! I put mine into my toaster oven on a baking sheet at 225F, low… for like 45 minutes to allow the flour to dry out… then I store it in a jar to use later for baking. There are lots of recipes on Pinterest using Almond Flour! So you may as well save that, since you have it. :)

Ok, so that was a lot of recipes :) – enjoy! It sounds over whelming but it honestly has become routine here… and as long as you make things like the almond milk before hand, its not much work when you actually decide to bake. Trader Joes almond milk is just as good though ;-) – if you don’t want to bother.

TO end… here are a few photos from Owen’s Birthday Fun.

and this face….

How I love seeing it :) – he did it last year too….

Lil’ Reed nawing his thumb, lil dude is so teething.

& to end… a few flash backs of my dear Owee.

In this photo below, he reminds me some of Reed. Which is not typical :)

& a favorite…

*For fun, view Owen’s 2nd Birthday HERE*