What kind of crazy person spends 4 hours on their own birthday cake?

Uhh…

Me!!

As strange as that may sound, I really try my best to walk the walk and if I am telling all of you to try and eat birthday cake without artificial sweeteners, toxic food dye, and trans fat, then I am going to do the same.

While this may have taken a bit more effort than originally anticipated and the colors did not exactly blossom as intended, the taste was worth the wait. And in case you are wondering, the whole family loved it, even those who normally prefer boxed cake. Most excitingly of all, none of the athletes in the family experienced GI distress or rancid gas after this one! (No offense, Betty Crocker).

By the way, this will NOT take you 4 hours. Its just that I had to go through a bit of trial and error for all of this to come together well enough for you to replicate!

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Clean Cake, Birthday Style

Paleo, Vegan, whatever tickles your pickle- the ingredients can easily be adjusted to fit your needs!

Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 17 minutes
Servings 10 people

Ingredients

  • 1 cup coconut sugar If you prefer to use maple or honey, you will measure 3/4 cup maple or an overflowing half cup of honey.
  • 1 cup melted coconut oil
  • 4 eggs Chia or flax eggs work well for vegan, just be sure to let them sit and coagulate first.
  • 1 1/2 cups "buttermilk" (almond or coconut milk with 2 tsp apple cider vinegar mixed in)
  • 1 TBSP vanilla extract Replace with almond extract if that is more your style.
  • 1 cup almond flour
  • 2 3/4 cup cassava flour
  • 3/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1 pack all natural, plant based food coloring Link below!

The Best Homemade Frosting of Your Life

  • 2 sticks Kerrygold (grass-fed) butter
  • 1.5 cups coconut sugar
  • 2/3 cup almond milk
  • 1 TBSP vanilla extract
  • 3-4 cups confectionary sugar

Instructions

  1. Set oven to 350. Generously grease four 6 inch round baking pans.

  2. Pour apple cider vinegar in almond or coocnut milk and set aside.

  3. In your electric mixer, blend the oil, vanilla extract and sugar until creamy. Add eggs one at a time and continue to blend until somewhat fluffy.

  4. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour and baking soda.

  5. Start to slowly add the dry mix to your wet mix. Alternate with the "buttermilk". It will come out to about 3 pours of the dry mix and two of the milk.

  6. Once batter is well mixed, pour evenly across the 4 cake pans.

  7. For the rainbow effect, add a different color to each pan until your desired vibrancy is reached. I would highly recommend going as dark as humanly possible. When you are using all natural food coloring, much of the color bakes out. This is the coloring that I used and I had to add an entire bottle to each cake pan.

  8. Bake for approximately 15-20 minutes. Ovens will vary. Keep a close eye on it and throw a toothpick in the center at the end, just to be sure.

  9. Once cakes have been removed from the oven and are finally cool, take a cake leveler and scrape off the top so they are more easily stackable.

Frosting

  1. In a saucepan over low heat, bring butter, sugar, and milk to a boil for about 2 minutes.

  2. Continue to stir while boiling.

  3. Transfer to a large bowl and add vanilla.

  4. While electric mixture is running, slowly add in the confectionary sugar until desired texure is reached. Those of you who like more of a "wet" frosting will opt for closer to 3 cups and those who like more of a fondant texture will go closer to 4. Just make sure you ice the cake quickly as this frosting sets fast!!

  5. If you prefer to dye your frosting, go for it. Otherwise, start spreading the frosting across the top of each cake layer and carefully add the next layer on top.

  6. Once the cake is stacked to your liking, add the remainder of the frosting and spread across the top and sides of the cake. Add organic sprinkles and voila! You have yourself one of the cleanest cakes around.

Recipe Notes

  • If you are more of the canned frosting type or you simply don’t have the time, I would suggest Miss Jones Frosting or Simple Mills Frosting.
  • Also worth noting- the recipe for the frosting is a Bogden family recipe that has been handed down for decades. The original recipe calls for brown sugar instead of coconut sugar. If you care more about flavor vs. what type of sugar you are ingesting, I would suggest you use brown sugar!
  • If you decide to turn this into a traditional sheet cake in a 9×13 pan, be sure to cut the frosting recipe IN HALF!! Otherwise, you will have way too much. 

For what its worth, the colors, top to bottom were supposed to be bright yellow, blue, pink, and then green!

It was dumb of me not to document this process from the start so that you could have seen how beautiful the colored cake was in each pan before baking. But, hey, I’ve never pretended to be a food blogger. My degrees were in science, not home ec. I’m just here to give you versions of recipes that your immune system will appreciate.

Be sure to read all the side notes in the recipe as the ingredients can be modified in a number of ways to fit your dietary needs. You definitely do not have to make your own frosting either. Miss Jones and Simple Mills Frosting are my top two picks.

Also, this probably goes without saying but if you are making this cake for someone who does not care about ingredients, you will end up with a beautiful rainbow cake if you choose the old school route of white sugar and white flour.

Picture of a clean and healthy birthday cake by Kylene Bogden for her 30th birhday.

Thank you all for making this my best year around the sun yet.

Happy eating my friends!