Cake Of The Week: Healthy(ish) Baking

I don't think I'm alone having both the desire to bake and the desire to not become morbidly obese. Below I've listed all of the ways that I can think of to make your cakes better for you. Not listed are vegetables in cakes, which do add vitamins but don't really reduce the calories overall, so they're a bit pointless if you're looking for an excuse to eat more cake, unless you don't eat vegetables that aren't surrounded by cake, in which case you should go right ahead before you get scurvy.

It's really incredibly easy to reduce the calorie count/fat content of your baked goods. I like to try and eat healthily so, though I don't tend to mention it in my posts, I always use low fat spread in my cooking unless I'm staying with my family and all they have is Lurpak (even then I try and persuade them to buy the light stuff). Low fat spread doesn't change the way your cake comes out; all butters and spreads have slightly different flavours so your cakes might have a slightly different taste (i.e. less rich), but the quality will not change.

Another alteration I make to recipes that involve cream cheese is to buy either quark (which is probably the healthiest you can get when it comes to cheese), bringing a slight tartness to the table, or one of the supermarket brand ambiguous cream cheeses that are very low fat or 'light', bringing a more Philadelphia-type flavour to your cooking. As far as I can tell, this ambiguous cream cheese is Philadelphia cheese, but calling it Philadelphia must break copyright laws or mean they have to charge more or something. Anyway, it makes no difference. In fact, light Philadelphia is just as good. I was marvelling about its low fat qualities to my dad over Christmas.

A discovery that I made recently (see my healthy brownies for more details) is that mayonnaise can be used to replace butter or spread and cuts the fat content and the calories by a notable amount. You might want to watch the salt though, and increase the sugar by 10% to counteract the saltiness that it brings to the table.

I have recently discovered Tate and Lyle's Fruit Sugar, which the package claims can be used in 1/3 of the quantity of normal sugar because it is extra sweet. I tried it out and their claims seem to be genuine. This not only saves me money but also calories! Hooray! See my post about the Wimbledon Cake for more information.

In July was asked to sample Truvia, a calorie-free, all-natural sweetener that is three times as sweet as cane sugar. The whole thing is calorie-free carbohydrate, so it eventually will be broken down into sugars just like the carbohydrates in bread and even vegetables, but because it is calorie free I wouldn't worry too much about all that if I were you. It tastes just like sugar when used in baking and has a wonderful toffee aroma, but the baking guidelines state that you need to reduce the temperature by 10C and increase baking time by about 10 mins. For more about my experience with Truvia, take a look at the post on Chocolate Cupcakes With Buttercream Icing.

Some things can't be scrimped on. Egg yolks are far more calorific than their white counterparts, but the yolk is vital to holding your cake together so leaving eggs out of a cake (or biscuit) is a massive no-no. Who has ever heard of low fat chocolate? I don't think it exists. I suspect that the more expensive, high-percentage cocoa brands will be better for you but I can't afford those and buying value chocolate bars works fine for me. Flour is flour, and can't really be substituted for anything. Second to sugar, flour is actually the second most calorific ingredient of your cake; to avoid it altogether you can make flourless sponges, such as the chocolate log I made before Christmas.

There are several recipes on my blog which include low fat/calorie ingredients to provide something that is lower in calories, sugar and/or fat than if you were to use normal ingredients. To help you out, I've listed them below with some other recipes that are low in calories if you use the low fat/sugar ingredients that I mentioned above. If you ever need to know the calorie content of a recipe don't hesitate to contact me.

If you're still not satisfied, Picklee has a page full of substitutions for baking healthier food, e.g. swapping butter for avocado. Check it out!