In new news, it's our little girl's very first birthday this coming Tuesday! Her party is this weekend (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme, woo!) and it's all very exciting and busy. With the usual mixed emotions a mom will have. Excitement for her milestones, sadness because she's growing up. All that good stuff. Just yesterday she took her fruit pouch out of my hand and fed herself! What is this?!
She is also slowly working on standing and taking steps without support. Granted, it leads to a lot of falling down, but that's how her pulling up on furniture started and she got the hang of that really quick!
Over the summer I started my seemingly endless search for a smash cake recipe that met my high standards for her diet. Not to sound cocky when I say that, but I figure she has the rest of her life to eat GMOs and crappy food, so I just want to keep her system as pure and clean for as long as I can. I honestly didn't want a smash cake, she is mostly breastfed with a few small meals through the day, and hasn't really had any breads or cake-like substances. But my husband and his family really wanted a smashcake, and in the long run it isn't that big of a deal, but it just couldn't be all sugar and white flour.
Pinterest and Google weren't yielding much for my search. I swear, there really needs to be a crunchy mom search engine, so when you search it automatically cuts through all the crap websites I want no part in and only shows things from natural/alternative living sites. That would be such a blessing!
So, I changed my wording in the Pinterest world and began looking for gluten free or dairy free cakes, thinking surely any recipes I found in that search would be far more satisfactory than the ones I found previously. Luckily, I found a few I really liked (pinned to my "Kiddos" board on my pinterest! Link at the top of the page) and over the course of this past month settled on the one I will be making for Bree....
And the winner is.........Our Haven Hill's Baby's 1st Birthday Cake recipe. It's made with bananas and applesauce, pretty safe sounding.
And THEN the search for suitable frosting started. Oyyyyy freaking vey. It was a quest of blood sweat and tears. It appeared impossible to find a frosting recipe that wasn't full of sugar, dairy, or dye. And I may sound crazy, but that's just not acceptable for the baby who has only ever had breastmilk and fruits and veggies. (I'm sure I sound cray, but reallyy..... McDonald's, junk, all of that.... she has the rest of her life to try stuff like that. Happy clean belly now.)
A similarly "crunchy" mom suggested looking up whipped coconut milk recipes, and voila! I found a great "frosting" recipe! Oh She Glows offers this fantastic alternative to dairy/sugar overload. Click the links and read them! They make this Crunchy Mama so happy inside!
So, the decorations have been bought, the recipes found and printed and ready to start, all we have to do is make the food and set up. Yay for the very first birthday party!!!!
And a special thanks to Pinterest for just making life easier. You will suffice until the crunchy parenting search engine is available someday.
