It has been a week of self doubt. Its funny how becoming a mum has made me doubt myself. During my pregnancy I was so sure of the mum that I would be, of the rules that I would have and the life we would live. I would have boundaries and adult time and all that jazz. And then along came the mini one and she needs me. She needs me to cuddle and hold her, to feed and nurture her, to protect her. She needs me to play and bath and sing and chat and show her the world. And whilst some weeks I can happily skip along doing it, there are other weeks when I question everything that I am doing. Am I creating bad habits, am I doing too much, too little? Am I a terrible wife or a great mum or neither or both? After a lot of soul searching and a lot of chats with mamas, I have come to the conclusion that as long as you are doing everything with love then you are not doing anything wrong.

Anyway, this week of questioning also made me realise that our mini one is getting bigger and that made me think of themes for her first birthday (101 bull terriers?) and that of course made me realise that we would need an amazing cake.

A first birthday cake needs to be delicious for us parents but also just as good for the little ones enjoying it. So I am going to attempt to come up with four great birthday cake recipes over the coming weeks. I tackled chocolate first, with chocolate icing…did I tell you it had been a tough week.

This cake is totally refined sugar free and is made with only 4 dates to sweeten it. The icing is rich and delicious and made creamy by incorporating avocado into it. I gave this to the mums as our baby group today to test and it was a huge hit (with the mums and the babies)

Ingredients

1 cup plain white flour or white spelt flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup rapeseed oil (or melted coconut oil)

4 dates

150ml boiling water

1tsp baking powder

3tbsp apple sauce (pureed apple/pear/prune is fine too)

1 egg

Method

Place the dates into a bowl and cover with the boiling water

Leave to soak for 10mins

Place the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl

Blend the date and water mixture and then add to the dry ingredients

Add in the egg, oil and apple sauce and stir well to combine

Pour into a greased cake form (c.8inch)

Bake for approx 35-40mins at 170C

Chocolate avocado icing

For the icing simply blend

1/2 very ripe avocado

3tbsp cocoa

2tbsp maple syrup

2tbsp melted coconut oil