Normally, I am a chocolate fanatic, see my post on molten chocolate cake!!! But since February is my birthday month, I’ve been thinking a lot about birthday cake. But just the flavor, not actual cake.
I just love the flavor of “birthday cake”. To me birthday cake flavor is buttery, has a prominent vanilla flavor with a smidgen of something else and sprinkles, lots of sprinkles.
Birthday Cake Recipes that aren’t cake!
These recipes don’t use any boxed cake mix, but I think they really have that birthday cake flavor. They are fast recipes, taste great and are maybe even more fun to eat!
One of the first recipes I found was a recipe for Cake Batter Puppy Chow. I found it on freshaprilflours.com. Lynn the author of this website loves Puppy Chow recipes so much that she created an entire cookbook featuring her Puppy Chow recipes. Talk about finding a niche market. I have made Lynn’s Cake Batter recipe several times and it doesn’t disappoint. She has a great how-to video.
My tips for this recipe
I prefer to use Vanilla bean paste in place of the vanilla extract, it is one of my new favorite baking ingredients. It is a lot cheaper than buying vanilla beans and is used one-for-one same as extract. I think it gives a richer flavor and I love to see the vanilla speckles.
I also finely dice my chocolate, it helps it to melt faster. When I used larger chunks in this recipe, the mixture seemed to separate and was really chunky.
After making the puppy chow recipe a few times, I thought of other things that would taste great as birthday cake flavor, so I started playing around.
My first experiment was with Birthday Cake Crispy Rice Treats.
The next recipe I wanted to tackle was a birthday cake cookie, so many on Pinterest require the use of some cake mix, but I didn’t want to open a box of cake mix just for 1 cup or 1/4 cup of mix, so I decided to use my Great-grandmother’s Ice Cream Sugar Cookie recipe as the base. I got rid of the margarine, cream of tartar, changed the ratio of sugars, added more vanilla, almond extract and sprinkles.
Birthday Cake Sugar Cookies adapted from Grandma O’s Ice Cream Sugar Cookies
Fold in the sprinkles, fold in the fun!
If you are enjoying these awesome birthday cake recipes, check out my Birthday Cake Flavored Treats Pinterest Board and pin away!!!!
Cheers, Amy