Getting A Gluten Free Cake For 4 Year Old's Birthday

[lailabean]

My daughter is newly diagnosed as gluten intolerant. She has had her heart set on a Princess birthday cake for her birthday this September.

What should I do? Any suggestions?

[zarfkitty]

My daughter is newly diagnosed as gluten intolerant. She has had her heart set on a Princess birthday cake for her birthday this September.

What should I do? Any suggestions?

How much time do you have to plan? I've used Namaste and Pamela's mixes with wonderful results for mixed group (celiac and non-celiac) parties. No one ever knew the difference, until I proudly told them, of course! I recently did my sister's wedding cake and my daughter's birthday cake.

Wilton's website has lots of information about decorating a cake. Once the cake itself is gluten free, how you decorate it doesn't change (just be sure your frosting is gluten free, of course).

What kind of princess does she want? A disney princess? I'll bet Wilton sells a shaped cake pan along those lines.

If you're not comfortable with pastry bags and other cake-decorating equipment, I'll bet you can find a friend who is. But it's seriously easy.

As I'm typing, I just thought of something... if you could "lift" her favorite Princess from a storybook or coloring book somehow. Maybe tracing paper? And somehow move the image to the top of a 9 x 13 cake frosted in white icing, then all you'd have to do is use pastry bag "dots" in different colors to fill the image in. It wouldn't be any harder than coloring in a coloring book. It seems that if you traced on tracing paper, turned the tracing paper over over and used something edible to trace the "negative" like icing gel, then you could just press it onto your iced cake, carefully peel it off and color the image in.

Anyway, I do a lot of cakes, so feel free to PM me if you get stuck.

[Guest j_mommy]

I buy a gluten-free sheet cake from our local bakery and then decorate it as I want. They will decorate if I ask them to but I have fun decorating it!!

[Darn210]

Wilton has a cake pan for Cinderella and one for Ariel and Barbie (as a princess). There is also a pan that makes a cake/skirt for a Barbie that you can decorate anyway you want. And Zarfkitty is right - those shaped pans from Wilton are easy - they tell you what color of coloring paste to buy and tell you what icing tip number to use. Michael's and JoAnn Fabrics carry a lot of Wilton stuff. Wal-Mart, too. You can look at pictures of stuff on Amazon or ebay to get an idea of what they look like.

I've had good luck with the gluten-free yellow cake recipe from allrecipes.com. It did turn out a little better with the finer ground rice flour from an asian market. And Wilton's buttercream icing recipe is ideal for decorating.

If you are having a little party, a friend of mine did cupcakes and put a polly pocket in each one, a base layer of icing and let each of the girls decorate the cupcake "skirt" for their polly pocket. Then they each got to keep their doll.

[JennyC]

My son's birthday was yesterday. I got some good ideas from this site. They have pictures of homemade cakes.

Open Original Shared Link

[zarfkitty]

If you are having a little party, a friend of mine did cupcakes and put a polly pocket in each one, a base layer of icing and let each of the girls decorate the cupcake "skirt" for their polly pocket. Then they each got to keep their doll.

That's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cool!!

[kevieb]

we do most of our baking using our old betty crocker cookbook recipes. we just substitute gluten free flour blends for the wheat flour and add xanthan gum. most of our baking is very successful.

[Kibbie]

My daughter is newly diagnosed as gluten intolerant. She has had her heart set on a Princess birthday cake for her birthday this September.

What should I do? Any suggestions?

If you are into making your own I'd suggest: Open Original Shared Link with a gluten free cake

Here is the recipe I used for my Daughters 2nd birthday:

Chocolate Cake Recipe: (adapted from Martha Stewart's Chocolate Cake recpie)

Baking Time: 45 to 55 minutes

Cooling Time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours, 55 minutes

1 1/2 Cups unsweetened cocoa powder, plus more for dusting

1 1/2 Teaspoons salt

3 Heaping Cups Tom Sawyer Gluten Free Flour

1 Tablespoon baking soda

3/4 Cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 Cups buttermilk

3 Cups sugar

1 1/2 Teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/2 Teaspoons baking powder

4 large eggs, separated* (See directions), and lightly beaten

1 1/2 Cups hot water

2 8-by-2 inch round cake pans

Parchment paper

Flour sifter

Electric mixer and bowl

Rubber spatula

Long serrated knife

Directions

*Egg separation note: Reserve 2 egg whites from your 4 eggs for use at the end of the mixing process!

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees;. Butter cake pans. Line bottoms with parchment paper, and butter paper. Dust the pans with cocoa; tap out extra.

2. Sift cocoa, flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar into bowl. Beat in oil, buttermilk, vanilla, eggs, and hot water one at a time, using a mixer set at low. Beat until smooth, about 2 minutes.

3. In Another bowl beat the remaining egg whites until stiff peaks form.

4. Fold egg whites into batter.

5. Pour batter into pans. Bake 45 to 55 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centers comes out clean; an adult should rotate the pans halfway through and remove cakes from the oven.

6. Let cakes cool in pans on wire racks, 20 minutes, before inverting to remove.Discard paper. Cool completely on racks, top side up

[mama2two]

My daughter is newly diagnosed as gluten intolerant. She has had her heart set on a Princess birthday cake for her birthday this September.

What should I do? Any suggestions?

My daughter just made five and she is also on a gluten-free diet, so I made her cake with Pamela's chocolate cake mix, there is a recipe on there for a chocolate butter cream frosting, which i used as filling and i made a butter cream frosting which I dyed purple with food coloring, I ordered princess cake toppers on line and it was a hit, everyone went back for seconds, they can't tell you what gluten-free means but they sure loved her gluten-free cake. Hope your daughter has a great birthday!!!!