Hello everyone,

My son's first birthday is in a few weeks and I want to make him a smash cake, but I'm not quite ready to give him all that sugar. I've googled to look for healthier smash cake options, but I'm having a hard time finding an icing.  From what I have found online, it's hard to completely avoid sugar for icing.  I don't mind trying something like whipping cream, except I want to be able to pipe with it. I'm planning on using the grass tip to do a hay stack for a farm theme.  Any suggestions?

It's one day in a year, and they don't eat much of it anyway. You can apply it thinly.

Or just use mashed potatoes.

ABuy some Rich's or Frostin' Pride.

A

Aww, my brother and his wife allowed each of their children to have a little cake on the first birthday. They scraped off quite a bit of frosting so that the babies would only eat a little bit of frosting. I've never done a smash cake so I'm not sure what happens there. Does the baby smash the cake with his/her hands and gobble it up?

A

If the cake wasn't a traditional sugary cake the potato might work... a one year old doesn't know, that what we know as frosting by looking at it, should taste sweet and sugary. If it was maybe chopped bacon and chopped up veg held together with maybe more mashed potato it might actually taste nice and the child wouldn't know that's not how cake tastes if they've never had it before... Guess it depends on if you are happy to give them some sugar!

i don't know about piping with it but you can mash a banana and add cocoa powder without adding any sugar at all to make a pudding type spreadable substance--

-i mean whipped cream is the best for controlling the sugar but modeling with it is another thing--

i mean i'm just brainstorming here and since potatoes has already been mentioned--you could possibly get the look you're after with shoestring potatoes in the can--or shred & fry them yourself and you could really get the look of hay--

i'd eat fried potatoes with whipped cream

AI don't see the harm in having a sugary treat once a year. It's what you do the other days that really matters. Just my $. 02 :-)

It's not like the child is eating the entire smash cake.  At the parties I've attended, they play in it more than they eat it.  I would say they don't eat more than five or six little bites before the parents decide the mess is enough and they hose the kid off.  Just use a thin layer of buttercream.  You can pipe whipped cream but I'm not sure about using the grass tip with that. 

If you're worried about too much frosting, give him a cupcake. That's what I did for my daughter…not because I was afraid of too much sugar…I just wasn't about to make a whole cake for her to destroy. 

Awww, she's so adorable!

Haha! Thanks!