Smash Cake Recipe

If you’re looking for a healthy smash cake recipe, I have three easy smash cake recipes with no refined sugars. Flavors include chocolate, strawberry and banana. 

My baby just turned one, *crying*. Of course I was going to make her the best first birthday cake ever. I went with a two tiered cake so the party guests and family members can enjoy the bottom tier and she can have her own small cake. 

*If you’re wondering why I had three at her party, it’s because I tested all these recipes and practiced my cake decorating skills and one cake was Zara’s twin bestie.*

If you’re looking for a traditional cake, you can check out my vanilla 4 inch cake recipe for a vanilla flavor cake. It makes 1-2 6 inch cake layers or three 4 inch cake layers which is the perfect size for a smash cake.. 

I also wanted to provide a healthier smash cake recipe that has more whole some ingredients and doesn’t use refined sugar or artificial sweeteners but I couldn’t decide between the flavors so I posted all three below! 

There’s a chocolate recipe, a strawberry recipe and a banana recipe. They’re all made fairly similar and they’re super quick and easy to make.  

How to make a smash cake

First you’ll have to decide which recipe you want to make. There are three options below, or you can do my 4 inch vanilla cake as well. These three are made very similar, just whisk together the wet ingredients and fold in the dry ingredients.

Ingredients for the cake:

• Flour: I kept it simple with all-purpose flour. You can replace that 1:1 with a Gluten-free flour like Bob’s Redmill or King Arthur. You can also use cake flour. 
• I also HIGHLY recommend using a digital scale, as you will almost always overmeasure the flour. 
• Sugar: I used maple syrup as the added sugar and I really tried to keep it minimal. The unsweetened applesauce, strawberries and/or bananas also help with sweetening the cake. 
• Greek yogurt: I normally use sour cream in my cakes but greek yogurt is full of protein so I used that here. You can also use coconut cream, coconut milk or whole milk here.
• Applesauce: I used applesauce and/or bananas to replace the oil/butter normally found in cakes. You can use ripe bananas, applesauce or pureed pumpkin in any of the recipes. 
• Egg: I kept the egg because it’s full of protein and healthy fat but if you’re trying to do egg free you can also do a flax egg, which is 1 Tbsp of flax meal with 3 Tbsp of water and let it gelatinize for 10 minutes. 
• Flavors: I used cocoa powder in the chocolate cake, freeze dried strawberries (ground in a food processor) and natural strawberries in the strawberry cake and a ripe banana in the banana cake. 

How to make the frosting

I wanted to make the frosting with minimal sugar as well so I went with a cream cheese frosting. Cream cheese is naturally pretty sweet so I just added a little maple syrup and a little flavoring. Just use a hand mixer to cream the cream cheese and then mix in the rest of the ingredients for each one.

For the chocolate cake I added cocoa powder, for the strawberry cake I added ground freeze dried strawberries and for the banana cake I added cinnamon. 

I considered doing a whipped cream frosting or a coconut cream frosting but those are even softer and less stable so I didn’t want to go through the hassle adding gelatin and waiting for them to set. 

How to decorate a smash cake

So if you’re trying to make fancy decorations, that’s going to be pretty difficult with a ‘healthier’ frosting. I wasn’t messing around with that so I just used my Swiss meringue buttercream recipe to decorate Zara’s cake (this sort of defeats the purpose of a healthier smash cake lol but she barely ate any of it so whatever).  

However, if you want something more low key and nothing super fancy, you can just use the frosting recipes provided to lightly frost the cakes and top with some sprinkles and fresh berries or other fresh fruit.

The chocolate and strawberry frostings are much easier to work with since they have cocoa powder/strawberry powder in the recipe that absorbs some of the moisture.

The cinnamon frosting from the banana cake is a lot softer so I would refrigerate it for a little before assembling the cake and refrigerate the cake after assembling and before decorating.

Another option is to add a little powdered sugar to the cinnamon frosting to thicken it up a bit.

What cake pans to use for smash cakes

All of these recipes make enough batter to make either one thick 6 inch cake layer, two thin 6 inch cake layers or three 4 inch cake layers for a layer cake. 

I use traditional 6-inch cake pans and for the four inch cakes, I actually just use a 4 inch springform pan that I bought for mini cheesecakes. 

Mix and match the cakes and frostings

This is the best part, you can mix and match the frostings with the cake layers! If I were to make one for myself, I would probably do the banana cake with the chocolate frosting and maybe even swap out the banana for pureed pumpkin. Pumpkin + chocolate = my fav.  

Pro tip: add sprinkles to the strawberry cake for a funfetti strawberry cake.

How to store smash cakes

The smash cake should be stored in the refrigerator since it’s made with cream cheese frosting. You can bring it out to room temperature 1-3 hours before it’s time to smash. 

Thanks so much for reading today’s post, if you have any questions just comment down below. Make sure to write in the comment section because I can’t reply in the rating section:). 

If you make any of these smash cake recipes, I would love to see them so make sure to tag me @baranbakery on instagram. Let me know if you mixed and matched the frostings and cakes or stuck to the original recipe.

As always, have a blessed day and happy baking!

Love, B