A couple years ago, I showed you how I made this Daniel Tiger birthday cake for my daughter's first birthday. That has been one of our most popular posts, so I thought today I'd show you what I did for her third birthday party! 

She has been adamant for a few months that she wanted an elephant birthday party. So I set about figuring out what one does for an elephant party. I am going to show you the cake I made and give you the recipe for it. I also want to tell you about the games we played.

First, a word on decorations. I went with easy and got grey balloons and plates. I got small clear sparkling cups for drinking.

​Now, on to games!

Creating a twist on the classic pin the tail on the donkey game is always fun and easy to do for a kids birthday party. Since this was an elephant birthday party, of course I had to make a pin the trunk on the elephant! I'll be uploading a copy of this to our subscribers only page this weekend, so you can print it and have a pin the trunk on the elephant game for your own elephant party! So make sure you subscribe to get a copy of it!

Of course, all the rules to this game are the same. This is a picture of her cousin after he pinned his trunk perfectly (we think there may have been some fraud involved). It is a fun game for all ages!

The second game we played was one my MIL came up with. She ran to the store and found a bag of unshelled peanuts (no small feat in December when they aren't in high demand.) She and Emily hid them around her yard. Then when her cousins came over they went on a peanut hunt. All of her cousins at the party were her bigger cousins, so they let the 3 year old birthday girl win. But a hunt is a fun activity when the weather is nice. It'll help the kids work up a nice appetite for the elephant cake you'll eat later!

A few other fun ideas for elephant party activities are making elephant masks for the kids to wear, like these here.

I was pretty happy with how this cake turned out. Drawing is not my forte, everyone else on this blog is much better at it than I am. Fortunately, an elephant head is a pretty simple shape to duplicate! So, if you're like me and think you can't draw well AT ALL (honestly people, my stick figures don't usually turn out right) I am here to tell you, you CAN make this elephant cake! 

You can see from the picture the eyes are a little uneven and the trunk isn't perfect. Guess what, it's your kid's birthday party so, it's okay! Emily loved her elephant cake, and that is what mattered.

I even drew these little elephants on the side. They weren't perfect either, but they still looked like little elephants. I am really happy with the overall look of this cake, and you will be too!

The recipe I'm sharing with you is my go to recipe for chocolate cake. It comes from the back of the Hershey's Cocoa box. It is such a moist, delicious chocolate cake! It also holds up well for stacking!

There you have it. A simple formula for a fun elephant birthday party.

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    Lindsey and Maddy's birthdays are one day after the other.  For Lindsey's birthday, I made a pumpkin roll, because she is Lindsey.  The lover of all things pumpkin.  I don't think we have shared that recipe with you yet, so that is something we will have to do!  For Maddy's birthday, I needed to come up with something vegan that says fall birthday.  So, I did!  These Vegan Caramel Apple Cupcakes are super delicious!  I know she will love them. 

    Before I give you the recipe, here are a few tips: 

• You may use regular, unsweetened applesauce in the cake.  Or you may use cinnamon applesauce.  They both taste great and not only does the applesauce flavor the cake, but it is an egg substitute and replaces some of the fat! 
• I was out of vegan butter at my house, so I used shortening for the cake and the frosting.  It worked great!  But if you have vegan butter, it would work just as well. 
• The frosting can be tricky.  It came out perfectly on my practice recipe, but then for the real thing, I put in a little too much coconut milk and had to add powdered sugar.  It didn't hold its shape as well, which was sad for my pictures, but it still tasted delicious. 
• If you don't have any canned pie filling, you could simply dice up some apples and toss them with sugar and cinnamon and saute them in a skillet with butter and a tiny bit of lemon juice before adding to the top of the cupcake.  
• I used vegan Coco Caramels that I melted to make the vegan drizzle.  They do have a distinctive coconut taste, so if you don't like that, you could try a different vegan version of caramel sauce. 

    After making the cupcakes, let them cool then top them with these 3 steps: 
​

Now, here is the recipe! 
​

Vegan Caramel Apple Cupcakes

     The nice thing about these cupcakes is that they are moist and they taste like Fall.  No one will ever guess that they are vegan! I know Maddy will love them! 

Sometimes I think about how our grandparents, great grandparents, and maybe even our parents grew up having dessert as part of their dinner fairly regularly. My mother in law came to visit about a month ago and was talking about how every Sunday night there was pie. Her mom would bake a pie once a week. Once a week!

I love baking desserts, but I generally avoid making dessert for dinner because it takes extra time, and then there are all the extra calories. Dessert is usually reserved for when we're having people over.

Sometimes though, I think about having Sunday dinner with dessert.

With that thought in mind, I baked this cake yesterday.

We shared our Chocolate zucchini cake recipe and I thought about baking that because I had some zucchini, but I also had bananas and thought maybe a non-chocolate cake would be nice.

So I did some experimenting and came up with this zucchini banana cake with a delicious cream cheese frosting. We all enjoyed it, and really, you get the added bonus of knowing that even though you're eating cake, there is a vegetable AND A fruit in it, zucchini and banana! A great marriage for a great, moist cake that you can say is healthy (er)!

It's a win win.

Although, I did decide I'd probably hold off on Sunday night desserts until we have more children and they are a bit older. Because, that leaves a lot of cake to finish off during the week, and I have a husband who doesn't eat leftovers. It's really not helpful.

​YOU can make this cake, and it will be a hit!

​I threw my zucchini in the food processor because it is faster. I chopped them up until they looked like this.

I threw the zucchini in last and just left it sitting on a paper towel to absorb moisture until I was ready for them.

This zucchini banana cake is also easy to make gluten free. I just substituted regular flour for Bob's Red Mill 1 to 1 Gluten Free All Purpose Flour and it still turned out great!

Also, if you wanted to make it vegan you could substitute the eggs for flax eggs and instead of cream cheese frosting, make coconut whipped cream instead! I might try that the next time because I do think the whipped cream would go perfectly with the light taste of this cake!

​Happy baking!

​**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. ​  But, all opinions expressed are my own.

Hey Alicia here.

We originally posted this recipe last year in May, but I live in a different state and didn't get to try the cake the first time around. So, I made it recently with a giant zucchini my friend gave me from her garden and it was seriously THE BEST CAKE I'VE EVER HAD. It was fluffy, moist, soft, chocolatey, deliciousness. It was light and airy. I wanted to make this cake again before it was even  all gone. I especially love that this cake doesn't  need frosting. The brown sugar chocolate chip topping was PERFECT! 

I decided we need to share this recipe again because now Is the time of year when people start finding huge zucchini in their yards that are perfect for baking. Try this, you will NOT regret it. Seriously, I'm considering not eating zucchini any other way from now on.

To really make your cake fluffy make sure you cream the butter and sugar really well, until they are light and fluffy and almost increase in volume. Doing this helps to trap air into the batter. Then I repeated this process when I added the egg in (beating it for a little longer to fluff up the wet ingredients). It made it amazing. Go and make this cake and  be amazed at the results. You won't regret it!

​Original Post Below:

    My DIL's mom, Anita gave me a giant zucchini.  Yes, we know that the smaller ones are the ones you are supposed to pick to cook up for a delicious dinner veggie.  But, if you have ever grown zucchini, they somehow have a way of hiding until finally one day there is a giant one laying there taunting you to do something with it.  Anita found this particular one before it had a chance to become extraordinarily huge, but it was big enough for me to make 2 recipes out of it!  Today I will share with you the first thing I made with it.  It is The Best Chocolate Zucchini Cake Ever! 

    When Anita handed me the zucchini, she said, "Here! Make some zucchini bread!"  I had every intention of doing that and taking her a loaf.  But then one afternoon a couple of days later, I looked in the fridge and realized that I needed to use that zucchini and the idea of a chocolate zucchini cake came into my head.  I had heard about them before but never made one.  I as so glad that I did because this cake came out so moist and delicious, much better than any zucchini bread I had ever made!  This particular recipe was adapted from an old church recipe compilation.  It doesn't need frosting because it has a brown sugar, chocolate chip topping that is perfect!  
     Now, here is my secret "oops" moment that caused this cake to be so moist, I believe.  I used my food processor to grate the zucchini.  I accidentally left the chopping blade down in the bottom of the food processor!  What I ended up with was coarsely chopped, slightly pureed zucchini.  It was almost like a very thick applesauce, only zucchini.  Well, I couldn't waste it, so I went ahead and made the cake anyway! It was an amazing success.  I took it to our church choir practice to share it.  It was a hit!  

​3winksdesign's Moist Chocolate Zucchini Cake

   Even if you don't have a giant zucchini, you can use regular sized ones for this recipe.  Later, I will give you the recipe for what I did with the rest of the zucchini! 
   Have you ever made a silly mistake that ended up making your recipe more delicious?  Let me know in the comments! 

     If you don't have any zucchini at all for this recipe, here is one that Lindsey made for Memorial Day last year! 

Find that pie and many others, not included in the blog, in our Pie Book, available on Etsy!