Hi there,

I want to bake a cake for my baby (seven months old). I am looking for low sodium baking powder. It is too expensive to ship it from US. Does anybody know of any place in Zurich region where I can buy it.

Any enthusiastic health conscious baker around!!! Please do reply.

Thanks in advance

Cheers
Anu

Isn't the sugar and refined flour far more unsuitable for a 7 month year old than an eighth of a teaspoon of salt?

I agree.. Even sugar is not a good option. I intend to use formula powder as a sugar substitute. We can get baking powder with no sodium at all. For instance check this out. (http://www.sunnybridgenaturalfoods.c...asp?itemid=117) As I said it is too expensive to ship it from US. I looking for options in Zurich to get similar products.

Can't you just feed your baby a banana and a glass of milk? Are you really training her to acquire a taste for cake? I promise you she won't be too enthused about your low sodium, formula powder "cake".

I've made many "baby" cakes for birthdays and the sodium is the last thing you need to worry about. Just make the cake using products you can find here and it will be fine. It's a one off thing. At seven months I'd be more concerned about eggs and wheat. Good luck.

Thank you for taking time to reply. Unfortunately it does not answer my query.. Different people have different ideas.. that is why such products exist in the market. If the idea does not suit you don't bother convincing people otherwise.

There's no such thing as low sodium anything here - there is no market for such things in Switzerland.

Baking Powder in Switzerland has the following ingredients:

E450 Phosphates - used in baking products to improve color and as a rising agent. The sodium aspect is different than sodium you would have in table salt...it is mostly from helpful minerals such as magnesium, calcium, etc...

E500 Natrium Carbonat (otherwise commonly referred to as baking soda) - a rising agent which creates CO2. It is also a helpful ph regulator

Wheat or Corn Starch

I have never seen anything called "sodium-free" baking powder in Switzerland. You could try visiting a Reformhaus and asking. I would recommend Egli in the basement of the main train station in Zürich or any Müller Reformhaus.

Good luck with the search...

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Sorry Jack, but sodium carbonate is washing soda, a.k.a. soda ash (Na2CO3). Baking soda (E500) is sodium hydrogen carbonate, a.k.a. sodium bicarbonate (obs.).

This forum never ceases to amaze me. It would never even have entered my head to look for low-sodium baking powder for when my son was a tiddler.

Normal baking powder in a normal cake recipe and he's now a normal strapping, robust 4 year old.

Tip is to limit the cake, not skimp on the ingredients...

As best I can tell, sodium-free baking powders use calcium carbonate or potassium bicarbonate instead of sodium bicarbonate (or whatever it's called now ).

Why not go to an Apotheke and buy the ingredients to mix it yourself:

2 parts cream of tartar (Weinstein) — this is the acid component
1 part calcium carbonate (Calciumcarbonat) — this is the alkaline component
1 part corn or potato starch (Maizena) — to prevent clumping

Mind you, regardless of what the eHow link above says, this is single-acting baking powder. It will not give quite the rise of ordinary double-acting baking powder, which relies on the temperature-sensitivity of aluminum salts. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baking_powder

I agree.

It leaves me wondering, How much sodium would a toddler size person get in a toddler size piece of cake?

Surely that is the way to go!!!

But isn't there always room to improve in all aspects of life!! May be I am getting too philosophical here.. i hear similar comments from my friends when I buy BIO products.. "We ate regular food and we all are just doing fine" I don't know if low sodium is the right way to go.. I think it is worth trying not just for my baby now.. but also in the future..

Bio food and low sodium baking soda are not exactly on the same level. I buy bio whenever I can, unless it's been flown all over the world. That I won't buy.

The amount of sodium that your child will get from a tiny piece of cake is not enough to be worried about unless you are feeding him cake every day.

But whatever, as you say, it's your choice. No one is going to change your mind.

It is possible to get sick from sodium deficiency. Occasionally somebody succeeds in getting enough sodium out of their diet to end up in the hospital.

I think the only people at risk are marathon runners and people who quaff their own body weight in water on a daily basis, though.

Those are the people most commonly at risk. However, it is possible without extreme sports. Now, it requires a diet which is odd by modern standards - just removing baking powder sodium won't do it - but sometimes anything seems plausible when people get crazy ideas into their heads.

Including such causes as that Hold Your Wee for a Wii contest!

Zero since it will all land on the floor anyway.

I understand you wish to bake a cake for your baby, I thought I'd just throw and idea out there... How about a layered veggie/fruit cake? I don't know what veggies and fruits you have already introduced into your baby's diet but you could do something like this:

1. Boil a bunch of veggies and/fruit separately.

2. Puree them and layer each fruit and/or vegetable on top of each other.

It would look really cool with different colours and you could make little shapes by cutting up some of the boiled food prior to pureeing them and place them on top as decor.