Easy Cake Recipe For Kids: Lemon Cottage Cheese Loaf
Description
Let them (ie, your child) eat cake—but do it wisely. Like this toddler friendly cake, an easy and light-as-air loaf that’s light and bright enough to be served at any time during the day–in fact, the traditional version of the cake, as served in Sicily treat, often pops up at breakfast. That cake traditionally has ricotta cheese as its dairy filling; we’ve gone with cottage cheese simply because it’s high in protein and may be more readily available in your fridge–and begging to be used–ricotta. (Instructions for using ricotta are in the ‘Adapt’ section.) We’ve cut the sugar in half for this one, including getting rid of the traditional dusting of powdered sugar on top of the cake; feel free to add it back in, especially if your cottage cheese is not low sodium. One thing that remains true: it’s still great for breakfast—and you’re the kids definitely not gonna say no to cake for breakfast.
Ingredients
Instructions
Prep
- Preheat oven to 350. Melt butter; set aside to cool. Coat a loaf pan with cooking spray, then cover the bottom of the pan with a piece of parchment paper.
- Blend your cottage cheese until smooth (i.e., few, if any, curds).
- In a small bowl, blend the flour(s), baking powder, baking soda, cornstarch, and a shake or two of cardamom (if using). Sift until dry ingredients are integrated.
- In a large bowl, add in and beat the eggs; then add the melted butter, whipped cottage cheese, sugar, vanilla extract, and a generous drizzle of honey. Mix until blended.
- Add the flour mixture into the bigger bowl and stir until a loose batter forms.
- Pour the batter into the loaf pan; spread batter out to ensure even coverage of pan. (Note: batter will only reach about half way up the pan.)
Cook
Cook until a knife inserted into center of the loaf comes out clear, roughly 40 min.
Allow to cool five minutes before removing from loaf pan.
Serve
The cake is nice and tasty straight out of the pan, but if you want to show out feel free to add a bit powdered sugar, berries, or whipped cream on top. Slices will be thin and not excessively large, so your child could just grab at it to eat, but it also makes for some good fork practice if you lay it flat on a plate.
Adapt
To make it more like an Italian cake, use one cup of ricotta instead of cottage cheese–just check the salt content in the ricotta, as you may need to add a pinch to the batter; you can also cook in a cake pan to make it a more traditional slice (but you’ll need to double the ingredient proportions for that). If you don’t have almond flour, or are the sort to blanche at the idea of using multiple flours, just roughly ⅞ cup of all-purpose flour, which is essentially a cup of flour with two tablespoons of flour removed.
