For Clover’s first birthday I baked a chocolate coconut and almond cake full of Paleo goodness free of gluten and dairy.

My sister runs yoga retreats in Kangaroo Valley and her chef of choice for them is Angie from Love Life and Gluten Free. My mum attended one of the retreats and her pasalubong (gift when you go away) for us was Angie’s cookbook. We absolutely love it. Tim made delicious dishes for my mum’s 60th and has requested a number of times that I make the tahini cookies so it was only fitting that I made a cake from one of Angie’s recipes.

It takes me a lot longer to bake these days but I’ve found a bit of a rhythm and I give myself plenty of time. Our low key celberations started around 4 so my plan was to start the cake in the morning and have it done by then. Success!

In between Clover duties, going out and having lunch I baked the cake. I got to use my new glass bowls from the fancy kitchen store as I’m trying to replace our plastic baking things with glass. I ended up using a tea strainer to sift the cocoa (I’ve done it before) and I think I really need to actually buy a sifter. I’ve also lost our round cake tin so used a bread tin and that worked fine.

I poured a little bit of the batter into four yellow cupcake holders. When I showed 3 year old Matt “Clover’s cake” he looked so disappointed at how tiny it was. The only “decoration” the cake had was a single yellow fairtrade birthday candles from Oxfam.

We took photos, sang happy birthday and Clover devoured her mini cake. She loved it so much she wanted more. Our subtle baby knows a yummy paleo treat when she sees one.