My friends Heather and Amy both have little ones that will celebrate their first birthdays in the month of September. So in honor of Lilly’s and Micah’s special days, I am sharing the recipe I used to make each of my children’s first birthday cake. I had two other friends who used this recipe within the past year for their little ones as well. It was originally a muffin recipe that I baked in 2, 9″ pans to make the cake. To make a traditional mini-cake, I used a cereal bowl to “trace” and cut out 2 small circles. I used plain greek yogurt sweetened with maple syrup for the frosting. One of my friends mashed up banana and mixed it with the yogurt for her son’s frosting, and, according to  mom, he continued saying “Mmmm!” as he ate it.

I just couldnt stand the thought of feeding my babies tons of sugar and fat when they had had little to none up until that point. So I played around with and perfected a recipe that I had come across on the internet (It took many tries!) so my kids could “have their cake and eat it too.” Here is Joel enjoying his first birthday cake…

ALL NATURAL BANANA MUFFINS

1 Cup Whole Grain Flour (I like chickpea flour)
1 Cup Unbleached Flour
¾ Cup Uncooked, Regular Oats
2 t Cinnamon
2 t Baking Powder
1 t Baking Soda
¼ t Salt
5-6 Bananas, mashed
¾ Cup Apple Juice Concentrate, thawed
2 T Pure Maple Syrup
4 Eggs, beaten
½ Cup extra virgin coconut oil or extra light olive oil
2 t Vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line or grease
2 dozen muffin tins. Combine the dry ingredients
(flour-salt). Mix together remaining ingredients
(bananas- vanilla) and then stir into the dry
mixture. Pour batter into muffin tins about ⅔ of
the way full and bake 15-20 minutes.

*You can turn this recipe into pumpkin muffins by
replacing the bananas with one can of pumpkin
and adding 2 t pumpkin pie spice. Make it an extra
special treat by mixing in mini chocolate chips!