A Homemade Gluten Free Birthday ‘Cake’

I remember celebrating my first birthday after learning of my severe gluten intolerance. It was less than two months after going gluten free and it was still very new for me and my family. My parents actually bought a regular gluten-laden birthday cake for the occasion and I was responsible for buying my own slice of gluten free chocolate cake. Somehow it’s just not quite the same having everyone else slice and eat a nice looking birthday cake, while I’m stuck scraping the icing off of my plastic container — especially on MY birthday.

I’m happy to say that a TON has changed since that birthday. My family is super supportive of me and always ensures that family gatherings have gluten free food to keep me safe. And in their defence, five years ago there weren’t near as many options for gluten free baked goods as there are now.

My birthday cakes have definitely progressed for the better. Going from stale, dry individual slices of gluten free cake bought from the grocery store, to everyone eating slices of Raw Aura‘s amazing raw banana chocolate cake, to this year when I actually made my own ‘cake’! I can’t tell you how proud I am that I made my own gluten free birthday ‘cake’ for everyone in my family to eat together. That’s how a birthday’s supposed to be. I say ‘cake’ loosely since it wasn’t so much of a traditional cake than a Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pie!! Oh my. What better way to celebrate a summer birthday than a cold cream pie? I love the banana – peanut butter – chocolate combo, so this was a real winner. My family loved it and fought over the leftovers. That’s how good it is. Nobody even batted an eye about it being gluten free.

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Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pie – made with gluten free peanut butter cookies as the crust

A big thank you goes out to Alaina at Fabtastic Eats for the incredible recipe and inspiration! I highly recommend that you check out her recipe (she’s got great photos of the dessert too). Her recipe isn’t gluten free, but it was super easy for me to convert it. The recipe calls for store bought Nutter Butters, which are peanut butter cookies in the U.S., instead I made my favourite naturally gluten free peanut butter cookies by Our Best Bites. I made a batch of the cookies and then once they had cooled I put them in a plastic baggie and crumbled them until they were all crumbs. Then I poured the crumbs into a pie dish and added some melted butter in order to form it into a pie crust. Such an easy, convenient and tasty way to make a simple gluten free crust. I’m definitely going to use this trick in the future when I make cheesecake. Then I just made sure that all of my other ingredients were gluten free and soy free. Easy as pie!

It really is such an easy, summer cream pie and it’s pretty looking too! It’s the perfect gluten free dessert to bring to your next BBQ. A gluten free dessert that everyone will enjoy. I strongly suggest taking a large slice though because it will disappear quickly!

Note: Personally, I found the pie was best after it had been in the freezer for about two hours and then left on the counter for about 5 minutes to thaw before slicing.