BEST INTENTIONS

For months leading up to Luke's birthday party I searched and searched for recipes and cake pans and things that would help me in making the world's greatest sugar-free firetruck birthday cake. I just really wanted to attempt to make a "healthy" birthday cake for my son on his second birthday. My husband felt I was being overly ambitious since I didn't just want to may a firetruck cake but I wanted to make a 3-D firetruck cake. In searching the internet I came across a website that provided me with wonderful inspiration: www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com. Luke's cake wound up being an amalgam of several of the cakes that I found on that site. In my preparation I found organic food coloring made from fruit or vegetable juices (vegan-essentials.com), agave cake recipes, several square pans, organic cookies for the tires, fruit-juice sweetened gum drops for the lights, an icing gun, several tips, and I even lined up a babysitter to come play with Luke out the house while I made everything. I was READY.
The night before the party I did a "test-run" of the cake to make sure that my agave concotion with added zuchinni for nutrion was really edible. It was more than edible, it was delicious. This was going to be a cinch!
Well the icing experience was another story. After making batches of agave buttercream icing (which I did not think was so delicious), I was set to die the first batch red for the overall color of the truck. Armed with beet juice colored dye I put in the first drop and knew instantly that it was going to be a long night. A girlfriend of mine was over for help and moral support and we both just looked at each other. It was almost pinkish-lavendar. This would not do for a boys firetruck. I tried everything: adding more, adding strawberry puree, cranberry puree, real food coloring, everything. All I know is that it was either that the "healthy" icing would not hold the color or the "natural" color just plain sucked!! Either way at the eleventh hour..and I do mean the eleventh hour of making this cake I had to buy awful, sugar-laden, gross, store-bought icing and toxic geled food coloring (which still took tubes and tubes to make red). Oh the guilt this sugar free mama felt. I think I hardly slept that night (which might have been that I tasted the frosting so many times that the sugar kept me up).
I told every parent at the part that the cake was agave sweetened but that the frosting was gross just to prepare them. In the end I must say that it was totally worth it. To see the look on my son's face when Marianne (my helper) and I brought the cake to the party. I would do it all again and probably will again next year. Hopefully Luke will be interested in something a bit less labor intensive by then!!