Fall Birthday Goodies

[Ceorlmann]

For my son's birthday tomorrow I am cooking up three sets of goodies: a cider doughnut cake with a pumpkin spice pudding center, pumpkin soup, and candied apples. Him being allergic to several different food items has made it frustrating finding food he will eat and won't cause him to adversely react. With him in mind I learned the following: gluten free flour works really well if the proper amount of xantham gum is mixed with it, and a 1/4 cup of applesauce, unsweetened, subs well in place of one egg.

The cake: I got the idea online and I didn't want William to miss out on cider doughnuts when I brought home a bunch earlier this year; something he couldn't have due to multiple ingredients he needed to avoid. Anyway:
2 3/4 cups of Bob's Red Mill gluten free all purpose flour
3/4 tsp of xanthan gum
1 cup of apple cider from the same orchard where I bought the doughnuts from
1/2 cup of unsweetened applesauce again from said orchard
1/2 tsp salt
A healthy amount of Ceylon cinnamon
3/4 tsp freshly ground cloves
>1 tsp of freshly ground nutmeg
3/4 cup of granulated sugar
3/4 cup of light brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

Combine wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately before stirring them together. Grease bundt pan and pour in the cake mix. Bake at 350 for 37 minutes. Take out and cool.

Pumpkin spice pudding: grab a box of Jello brand pumpkin pudding mix and make pudding. Let harden in fridge for five minutes, or while making cinnamon sugar to sprinkle on cake. I mixed in some extra virgin olive oil with the cinn sugar so it would stick better.

Pour pudding into center of cake once it's out of the bundt pan and you put on the cinnamon sugar coating. Center of cake will take most of the pudding you just made.

I'm currently toying with the idea of dabbing maple syrup on it as well, but that decision hasn't been made final yet.


Pumpkin soup: puree from three sugar pumpkins, one can of evaporated milk, box of organic veggie juice, healthy amount of Ceylon cinnamon, healthy amount of freshly ground nutmeg, freshly ground cloves and freshly ground allspice, two pinches of Afghan saffron, and a glop of maple syrup. Throw it all in a crock pot and forget about it overnight.


For the candied apples I'm still deciding which recipe I will use, but it will be from complete scratch regardless.

[cajunlady87]

Wow! Quite an undertaking to create such a healthy birthday treat for your son. Hope it's a great day for him besides the goodies you prepared for him.

[woodyz]

happy birthday little man

[Ceorlmann]

He did have a good birthday. Alas the candied apple seemed to be the biggest hit with him, but since he was allergic to multiple ingredients in the cider doughnuts I bought earlier last month there's no way I would've known about him not being much of a fan of apple cake. Too bad, because despite the significant modifications I made the cake turned out very close to the taste of the cider doughnuts. The pumpkin soup was enjoyed more by his sister which is a complete 180 from last year. Go figure. He loved the dinosaur figurines from angelhelp (some of which I used as birthday cake toppers) and the book which he went to bed with. He also got to spend more time with me than normal. Today turned out to be a half day at work and nothing pressing was at hand so I got to play with him first thing in the morning and then he came to work with me for the remaining couple of hours. We headed to a base restaurant afterward and split some sushi (he likes the ball of rice as opposed to the fish itself) before heading home for more stuff.

After their afternoon naps they had pumpkin soup then went outside to a bonfire and to smack around a dinosaur piñata I found at WallyWorld.

I'm glad he went to town on the candied apple because that took me four tries before I was able to get the hard crack stage without burning the syrup. He'll get more tries on the soup and cake in the future. If he doesn't like something one day he has a fair chance of eating it another time.

[cajunlady87]

Those little rascals taste for food can be as finicky as Morris the Cat. Love it today, hate it tomorrow. Hang in there, those little taste buds will eventually figure it out. You seem to be going above and beyond to help them with their diet problems.