The Test Bake: sugar-free cakes that taste good. No artificial subs or alternative sweetener #cookingathome

Truly Sugar-free Vegan Banana Cake & Carrot Cake 

I've been messing around with vegan baking of the sugar-free variety because I want to make a first birthday cake that is completely compliant with the baby's current diet. This means no eggs, dairy, sugar or sugar equivalents and shouldn't be much sweeter than a banana.

I found two recipes: a banana cake (on the left) and a carrot cake (on the right). Both recipes make about 4 cups of batter. I made an eighth of each recipe (about a half cup of batter each) and baked them in 4-inch springform pans. The batter filled the pans about ½-¾ inch high. You can see they bake up pretty flat, less than an inch high.

My test cakes were a bit wet in the centre but were fine once cooled, so I think that might be the norm for these kinds of cakes. They are dense (think banana bread) and would be good as breakfast muffins, as long as the centre is fully baked; the test batch wasn't large enough to tell. I think the raisins in the carrot cake make it a bit too sweet for the baby so the banana cake is better suited to my purpose.

The banana cake recipe can be found here - http://www.fitmamarealfood.com/babys-first-smash-cake-healthy-no-sugar-banana-cake/

The carrot cake recipe can be found here - http://www.wildandwee.com/2012/02/wees-1st-birthday-healthy-vegan-carrot.html

I've also tried this version of the banana cake, which shows up the most on blogs. I don't know where it came from but it's probably the original version of the sugar-free vegan banana cake. It's denser than the other one but it's a simpler recipe - http://www.ourhavenhill.com/2012/06/05/recipe-healthy-smash-cake-for-babys-1st-birthday/

Lastly, if you're curious, my frustrations with the entire search process are outlined here - http://asylum-01.tumblr.com/post/142021275658/vegan-cake-hunt-i