One of my favorite recipes that my mother-in-law makes is an awesome cake. It is a spice cake that has baby food in it—pureed plums, to be exact. Adding baby food to the mixture lowers the fat content because it replaces some oil and it makes it oh so moist. She always makes it when we come down to their house. I’m not sure if she makes it because she likes it (because I know she does) or because all of us like it, but it’s one of the desserts I rarely make and I love to eat down at their house.

In exploring how to create a caterpillar cake for the twins’ Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday party, I had the inspiration to make this cake, which is made in a bundt pan, then cut it in half to make a s-curve. The undulations of the pan imitate the segments of a caterpillar! I think it turned out pretty good, don't you?

I have made some small changes to my mother-in-law’s recipe. I do not keep self-rising flour in the house, so I tweaked the recipe to use all-purpose flour. I also had some different fruit baby food that I substituted.

Baby Food Spice Cake

2 cups self-rising flour (I used all purpose flour with baking powder and salt mixed in --3 tsp baking powder and 1 1/2 tsp salt, but you can use either option)

1/2 tsp. cloves

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

2 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

2 jars fruit puree baby food (my mother-in-law uses a plum (or prune) mixed puree)

Preheat oven to 350*F. Grease bundt pan. Mix the flour, baking soda, and spices together well. In another bowl, beat sugar and oil together. Add the eggs one at a time. Once the eggs are incorporated, add vanilla and baby food. Once the wet ingredients are mixed together well, add dry ingredients a little at a time until well incorporated.

 Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

You can eat it as is, or if you cake is transforming into a caterpillar, cut in half to make into a s-shape and ice with your preferred icing. For the twins' birthday, I used marshmallow creme icing--the recipe is found here. This icing was the light green in the picture.

The darker green and red is cookie icing from Betty Crocker.

 Thanks to my sweet mother-in-law for sharing the framework for this recipe! 

Sometimes I link up at the following places: Friday Food at MomTrends, Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays at Simply Sugar and Gluten Free, Hooking up with House of Hepworths, The Finer Things and I Dream of Clean’s Spring Cleaning Challenge, The King's Court IV's What's Cooking Wednesdays and Organizing Junkie's Menu Planning Monday.