Posted on by Cleverona Kitchen

3 Simple Tips to Make Healthy Cake Recipes

Cakes are among the world's, if not the world's, most common and loved desserts. These fluffy treats are loved so much that cake lovers just can't help but have their own takes of the existing cake recipes. Cakes come in various shapes, sizes, consistencies and flavors that it will be impossible to taste all of them in one's lifetime.

Since it is #NationalDessertMonth, we are going to explore the healthy route in making these baked goods! If you mean to get your hands on healthy cake recipes, read on.

Healthy Cake Recipes Do Not Need Store-Bought Cake Mix

Perks come with every box of cake mix. For one, they are cheaper than their homemade counterparts. Also, these products make baking easy and fast. All you need to do is pop open the box, pour the contents into a bowl, add water, add eggs, mix everything, transfer the mix to a baking pan and pop it into the oven.

The problem is that you do not have a lot of control with what goes into the mix. In other words, the convenience and the cheaper cost does not account for healthiness. It is also quite challenging to get your hands on a box of cake mix that results in the same level of tastiness as homemade cakes.

So instead of sticking with your grocery store-bought cake mix and just working to eat healthier (read: lesser) portions, switch to homemade cake altogether.

Creativity Helps in Creating Healthy Cake Recipes

Sfuff Cake Recipe

Try and be creative enough to stray from traditional recipes. See if there are ways for you to incorporate ingredients that will take your cake recipes a notch higher on the healthy scale.

For example, have you heard about Sfuff? Sfuff is a cake well-loved by those in the Middle East for its tastiness. It is also well-loved for the perks it offers once health as it contains a good amount of turmeric. If you want to explore ways to get creative with your healthy cake recipes then this sfuff cake recipe is a good place to start.

Another way to get creative is to explore other means of baking cake. Did you know that you can bake a cake in a frying pan? This means you can have your favorite dessert even when you are at a cookout or when you are outdoors. Your options to get creative with healthy cake recipes are endless!

Make Room for Healthier Ingredients in your Recipes

This is where the joys of homemade baking come in. As opposed to cake mix, you can pick out what goes into your mix. For this, you can play around with ingredient substitutes and portions.

For starters, you may want to explore these substitutes for staple cake ingredients - flour, sugar and dairy.

Whole Wheat Flour

  • Flour

Refined flour, which is used in most cake recipes, is already devoid of the nutrients whole grains offer. Substituting refined flour such as cake flour and all-purpose flour is then a leap forward to creating healthy cake recipes especially that cakes are mostly made of flour.  

You can substitute white flour or all-purpose flour with quinoa flour, barley flour, spelt flour, oat flour, millet flour and whole wheat pastry flour.

The trick is to find the right amount of substitute flour per portion of all-purpose flour because these flour substitutes have different consistencies from all-purpose flour. For instance, cakes baked with whole wheat flour tend to be "heavier." Also, there are substitutes that do not rise as well as the usual cake flour.

  • White Sugar

White sugar is another given when it comes to cake ingredients. With more and more people becoming conscious about how much sugar they take in, it is only right to think up ways to substitute this ingredient from our favorite dessert.

Brown sugar, coconut sugar and honey are common replacements for white sugar. The Greatist has a list of 30 sugar substitutes not only for making cakes and other desserts.

  • Dairy

A lot of people who want to do away with dairy products altogether.  You don't have to feel sorry for them because they have to skip cake. The good news is - they can still have cake. In fact, it is easy to replace the dairy ingredients in cake recipes such as butter, eggs, and milk.

Butter can be substituted with three food items which you most likely have in your pantry the whole year-round. These are canola oil, Greek yogurt, and olive oil. For each cup of butter, you can use a cup of canola oil or 3/4 of a cup of olive oil or half a cup of Greek yogurt.

Eggs act as the binder or the ingredient that holds all the other ingredients together. Giving up a binder may not result very favorably for any cake recipe. Replace eggs instead. One whole egg can be replaced with 1/4 cup pureed silken tofu or 1/2 to 1 mashed banana or 3 tablespoons of ground flaxseed mixed with one tablespoon of water.

Dairy Substitutes

Milk is the easiest dairy product to substitute. Soy milk, almond milk, coconut milk, macadamia milk, cashew milk and even rice milk can readily replace cow's milk or goats milk. The consistencies of these items and their taste differ from each other so you may need to experiment on which product will suit the outcome you want.

So what’s next? Go bake and let them eat cake! And this time, make healthy cakes! Happy National Dessert month!