Imagine, what if there were HEALTHY CAKES?

So I am constantly baking cakes for my friends' birthdays (well, usually I will use cake mix.) But I always feel horribly guilty about it, because as I am measuring out the oil and checking out the calories, I feel like I'm essentially baking them a cake of FAT and SUGAR. It kind of grosses me out, and I usually won't have more than a tiny sliver (just enough so that I'm not being rude.)

I'm really curious. Are there any alternatives? Does cake have to be unhealthy? Or at least, could it be less bad?

Any less fattening cake mixes sold out there that I don't know about? Any ready made cakes possibly?

Or maybe any recipes for making a nice healthy cake I'm proud to give to someone? I was thinking about this... like suppose I use whole wheat flour and less oil and sugar? I've also heard that oil could be replaced by light sour cream. Is that true?

Or should I just accept that cake is cake and not steamed vegetables?

your question is legitimate.  in my opinion, cake isn't a steamed vegetable.  don't try to fit a square peg into a round hole.

but others disagree, and it's worth noting their suggestions.  testosterone nation has an article of recipes for getting a lean, hot body.  scroll to the "5-minute metabolic pie" at the bottom of the page.  in terms of flavor, cooking light magazine has got the best recipes for low fat versions of yummy foods.  check out this article called "take the cake," which has a host of cake recipes.  have fun

instead of oil use applesauce!

My Aunt is a health nut and everything she makes is fat free or low in fat! She has the biggest sweet tooth ever. SHe loves her desserts! She made brownies from a box and added applesauce instead of oil! It tasted really good however i think she used the cinnamon applesauce which gave the brownies a different flavor!

I don't know if this took the place of the egg too! I am sure the websites mentioned above will have something better! lol

 

I love cake...well anything sweet really! ;) I always use a diet coke or sprite(depending on the cake) instead of all of the oil and eggs. They are always yummy and so moist! Also, I just heard that pillsbury was making lower sugar cake mixes, frosting and bronies now. I am def gonna have to check those out;)

Ah, thanks for all the great suggestions and the website. I will definitely try them the next time I bake a cake! 

oh, come on.  there's nothing wrong with serving someone cake on their birthday.  if they choose to eat cake every day, that's their problem, and if other's can't resist, same deal.  on my birthday, i want a real cake, not some zucchini-carob hybrid.

 Do you know, in a psychological word-association survey of Americans the word most commonly associated with 'chocolate cake' was 'guilt'?  In the same survey in France the most common response to 'chocolate cake' was 'celebration'. 

Butter, flour, sugar... nothing wrong with any of those things in moderation.   The Western World has made itself very fat eating low-fat, 'diet' cakes, biscuits, chocolate, pizza.  When what we should really be doing is eating proper cakes... like the ones you make and the ones the French eat... but in much smaller amounts, and eating more steamed vegetables the rest of the time. 

There are no bad foods, just bad diets.

I second the diet coke/soda cake idea. I had been skeptical, since I had always cooked from scratch before, without even a cake mix cause they generally taste pretty ordinary. But I was really surprised at how well chocolate/diet coke and orange poppyseed/diet sprite cakes worked out. Well worth trying, and especially great if you have somebody in your family like my dad who can't just have a small piece and be satisfied.

When I'm dumping like 4 cups of sugar and 1 cup of oil just into the frosting, and then like 2 cups of sugar and an entire cup and a half of butter into a cake, then I make a very "rich" cake. The frosting might have cream cheese too. Or if I use the prepared frostings, a lot of them are loaded with trans fat, which is definitely not good. But even if the ingredients are not "bad," the cake that is produced is an enormously calorie-dense cake, like 500 calories per slice. And people sure do like that kind of cake.

It's not like I can stop them from getting seconds either. What do I say? "Stop eating that cake!" So I want to make less calorically dense cakes so people can eat more, you know?

And I feel like I'm responsible for the cake since I made it. I think there's a certain level of trust, since only I made it, no one else would know how many calories the cake is unless I announced at the beginning, "By the way, this cake is 500 calories/slice." More importantly, I think the point is morally:

I don't feel like it's right to serve anyone a cake I wouldn't eat myself.

Does that make sense?

If you truly believe cakes are toxic stop making them all together.

Read carefully.

I never said I thought they were toxic.

But that's essentially where you're at.  You ask us to imagine a 'healthy cake' which immediately suggests that you see all cakes as, by definition, unhealthy.  The cakes you create you see as a bad thing.  You're 'grossed out' by fat and sugar in your original post.  Cakes are something you wouldn't eat yourself.  You specifically mention the trans fats (which is code for 'harmful' in this day and age)  You talk about 'dumping' cups of sugar... like it's toxic waste.  Then you offer the cake worrying about the calories you are giving people which simply reflects your own food anxieties.  Other people really don't share your anxieties. 

well, this cake isn't exactly "healthy, but it is extremely low calorie and okay to have once in a while.

Mix together Apple Sauce Snackin' Cake Mix (25 cal per serving), diet soda of your choice, and bake. Then use Walden Farms Caramel sauce as icing. One slice is only about 30 cal.

gi-jane, I feel like you have some sort of point to prove. You're trying to say, all foods are good, right? I feel that you have projected all these strange "food anxieties" on me, and I won't lie, I feel personally attacked. Somehow I feel compelled to clear things up, even though I should probably just ignore it. Well, let me define my terms. I talk about cake as unhealthy in terms of it being radically high in its density of saturated fat and sugar. While these are natural foods and are not in any sense toxic at all; at the same time, I don't think anyone can say that they are of health benefit to us. The saturated fat and sugar are both not things that contain actual nutrition for our bodies, and I would like to give things to my body that nourish and feed its needs. 

I am "grossed out" by the fat and sugar the same way people can be "grossed out" by the blood from the meat they are preparing and yet eat it 5 minutes later. People's minds work in mysterious ways. It's not as if I never eat fat and sugar. Of course I do! It's kind of hard not to. It's just that I don't normally see it in such huge quantities. 

And I never said that I wouldn't eat cake. I do eat cake, but I don't like to. Let me put it this way. I just don't have a taste for so much fat and sugar. It doesn't really appeal to me. I don't like the way I feel after eating sugar laden food products. I feel jittery like I've had too much caffeine.

It's a matter of personal preference. Some people think mayonnaise is gross, and they use mustard as an alternative. But it does not mean they somehow need to be corrected and start using mayonnaise because their mustard produces some sort of weird "diet sandwich." No, they like mustard, so they use mustard! There is no right or wrong about food.

And if you can tell me how trans fats are good for me, I would be interested in hearing about that. Contrary to what you may think, I did not bring it up purposely just to inject anti trans fat zeal to lift up what I wrote. Please don't read so much intention into every thing I wrote. I brought it up because it was an issue I thought about pretty recently when I baked a cake.

Yes, I'll admit "dumping" has negative connotations, but if it bothers you, I rephrase it to "pouring." But really I mean the same thing. 

You are right in the sense that not all other people share my so called "food anxieties," but I know for a fact that a whole lot of people do. Otherwise why would there be so many new light ice creams and lower calorie everything popping up in grocery stores? 

I feel like there are plenty of lower calories alternatives to desserts, etc. that still taste great (to me at least!), so who got to determine what was a "proper cake" (as you called it) got to be? Who says the one made with all the usual fat and sugar is normal and that the one I want to make is somehow all messed up? There is no right and wrong about food. 

Original Post by gi-jane:

 When what we should really be doing is eating proper cakes... like the ones you make and the ones the French eat... but in much smaller amounts

Yes!  There's something to be said for savoring, I mean really savoring, a small amount of a fully rich decadent cake, then a larger serving of a mild pseudo-cake that doesn't even compare in flavor or texture. (And no, not all low cal cakes are "psuedo cakes....)

I was once in a restaurant with a fabulous idea:  dessert bites.  They didn't have "low cal selections", but they sold their desserts in bites (~$2 a "bite" - about 2 small bites with a dessert fork).  I had one "bite" of their flourless chocolate cake - wonderfully rich full fat glorious chocolate.  I estimated it was under 100 cals, and fully satisfied even my wicked sweet tooth.

(Oh, and what does it mean when the first thing I thought of when you mentioned "chocolate cake" was "breakfast"?   Mmmmm.....) 

Real butter, made from cows that have grazed on grass (therefore giving the butter CLA -- conjugated linolic acid) is not bad for you.  Your body recognizes what it is and it gets digested efficiently.

Spelt flour will not spike your insulin levels like normal wheat flour.

Turbinado or Rapadura sugars are made from cane juice, not cane syrup and will not spike your insulin levels as much either.

A cake made from organic, as-close-as-possible to nature ingredients, eaten from time to time, will not hurt your body.  Use ingredients that your body recognizes and it'll be digested well (even the eggs should be from chickens that have been outside eating grass and bugs).

I've lost over 70lbs eating this way.

ah if only there were healthy cakes.. there are several 'healthy' cakes you can make however, most of which unfortunately don't contain chocolate ;p

BUUUUUT you should indulge once in a while, and good for you for having only a sliver! (please eat a bigger piece on your birthday tho!)

i have found that substituting ingredients with lower fat ingredients when making cakes doesn't work.. i made a banoffee pie once with low fat cookies and low fat cream, and low fat milk.. and it didn't taste good AT ALL.

my advice: make the cakes and just eat as much as you feel necessary.

hope this helps!

 Don't they call those RICE cakes? aka styrofoam goodness?

instead of oil you could use applesauce or canned pumpkin. or, you could make an angel foodcake; it's lighter and has way less calories.

if you aren't against artificial sweeteners you could make a diet coke cake. you take any box of cake mix you like, and substitute a can of diet coke for all other ingredients (oil, eggs, etc) and it's apparently really good. if you're surious about it, just search "diet coke cake" under the recipe index on this site and you'll find tons of recipes and guidelines.

Original Post by pgeorgian:

oh, come on.  there's nothing wrong with serving someone cake on their birthday.  if they choose to eat cake every day, that's their problem, and if other's can't resist, same deal.  on my birthday, i want a real cake, not some zucchini-carob hybrid.

I love cocolate zucchini cake, but I definatly would not call it a low fat.

So make a low fat one.

If you want to feel a bit more healthy then...
"This is a cake I made yesterday and tonight, since it tastes so damn good. It is only 350 cal. for the whole cake, and is in fact big enough to fit in a medium cake oven tray. This is a thing that totally satisfies my sweet-tooth cravings with the minimum calories amount plus the main ingredients are veggies and fruit, so it is in fact a very healthy choice in contrast to other sweet-tooth-craving food.
I post the recipe in two different mass systems, ounces and grams.

The 350 calories apple cake
100 gr / 3.5 oz zucchini, finely grated
225 gr / 8 oz apple, finely grated.
That means aprox. 1 large apple that has been peeled
30 gr / 1 oz skimmed milk powder
10 gr / 0.35 oz uncooked cous-cous
17 gr / 0.6 oz maize flour/ corn-meal
3 gr / 0.1 oz melted butter
- Sweetener of choice, quantity depends on the type of sweetener, just put the amount that
is the same as 1-2 tsp of sugar.
- little bit of vanilla in any form (with no sugar added of course)
- Tiny amount of salt
- Cinnamon powder, no sugar added.

Just mix everything well together except the cinnamon powder. Use the melted butter to spread in the cake oven tray, so it wont get stuck to the tray. Put the whole thing in the tray, drizzle cinnamon powder on top and bake for about 1 hour in 160° C or 320 Fahrenheit. It isnt very firm as normal cakes, and in fact it is more of a dessert then a cake, so be prepared that it is very soft in the middle, but should be firmer on the outside, and fully baked it should have a dark brown color. I really like eating no-sugar, low-fat vanilla icecream with it, or low-fat sourcream. This cake is a thing that tastes too good to actually be healthy, but it is fact that this is probably the cake with the healthiest ingredients of any dessert (except for plain fruit) I have ever known. This recipe is also certainly easy to adjust to ones liking. Instead of the skimmed milk powder, cous-cous and corn-meal you can use plain flour or other meals. You can also use different fruits. These are fruit options that I think would also taste good.
- Grated pears with a very finely grated lemon or orange peel. I think a 1/8 to 1/4 tsp of the peel would be enough for one cake.
- Grated bananas with cocoa powder.
- Grated pineapple with rum or/and cocoa-nut essence/flavor.
Just use your imagination to make a low-calorie cake with your favorite taste."
- from another website
But I figure cakes are goodt reats. I try to healthfy them a bit but if i ate cake all day I'd get sick of it and crave vegetables. Honest. I love fresh fruit