Cakes for Kids on Restricted Diets

by Melanie Carver

When a child is first diagnosed with food allergies to ingredients such as milk, egg, and wheat, parents may worry that a birthday cake will be impossible to make.  Although there are many allergy-friendly recipes available, a person's first attempt at allergy-friendly baking may not have the intended results; so finding an alternative "cake" may help until you get the hang of allergy-free baking.

Some children have very restricted diets due to food allergies such as eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) or food protein-induced enterocolitis (FPIES), and even allergy-friendly recipes may not work for these children.

Despite these limitations, exciting birthday cakes can still be made for a child on a restricted diet. Members of our community have created some ingenious cakes for their children and we'd like to share them with you for KFA's Cake Week.

Meg F created this two-ingredient cake for her son with EoE.  The only ingredients are apples (sauce and cider) and pork gelatin. It could be made with any safe fruit (juice/puree) and agar agar if you need to avoid pork or beef gelatin.

For her daughter's fifth birthday, she made a cotton candy cake:

Using melted Enjoy Life Chocolate chips (ingredients are cocoa and sugar), a silicone bundt pan and strawberries, Meg F create this birthday cake:

Maren, one of our long-time members, created this Steamed Rice Flour Cake using only a few ingredients (rice flour, water, sugar, baking powder).

Fruit cakes (not the "traditional" kind of fruit cake) are also a great way to impress your birthday guests.  Tara M made this Angry Birds creation: 

Saira S created this amazing fruit tower castle:

For more ideas, watch our archived video from KFA's webinar on Celebrating Birthdays with Food Allergies with guest speaker Yael Weinstein. Yael has created some awesome birthdays with just one ingredient: sugar.

On KFA's community, there is also an entire topic dedicated to non-edible cakes for kids who are tube-fed and cannot have food ingredients. (Registration is free to log in and check it out!)  Food allergies don't have to prevent you from celebrating, you just might need a little more creativity.

Posted by: Melanie Carver, KFA's Web Developer & News Editor, a long-time vegan and mother of two children with food allergies.