Though I am a cake designer myself, I have to tell the truth. In short, no, healthy cakes and muffins are unlikely to be easily available, because many common ingredients in the market ready-to-use cakes are high in fat and sugar. But if you don’t always want to make an excuse to give up cakes altogether, there are a few tricks and alternatives that can make a difference. I have several recipes that I have collected over the years and they are my favorite to entertain a friend or for a birthday party. If bread is not good for the body, it can be good for the soul.
The words “health” and “cake” are usually not used in the same sentence. Take a sponge cake, for example, half a kilo of butter, sugar, and flour, with half a dozen eggs on it. Ingredients like butter, ghee, chocolate, and cream make the cake delicious, but it can land on your hips forever. But there's a growing movement in bakeries across the UK trying to bridge the gap between healthy foods and delicious baked goods. Step into a modern urban bakery and you'll find sugar-free, gluten-free, and dairy-free cakes, pancakes, and cupcakes, as well as their healthy counterparts. Many of these recipes only cut down the things that make you fat, but some actually contain ingredients that can make dessert a healthy part of your meal.
Ingredients
At the heart of healthiest baking recipes are replacing high-calorie, fat-free ingredients with low-calorie, fat-free alternatives. Even if the goal is to bake a healthy cake, you want it to look and taste just like the classic recipes we all know and love. The simple act of swapping ingredients like an artificial sweetener or natural fruit for sugar can be applied to any cake recipe to shed a few grams of fat and calories. Apple juice is often used as an oil substitute in baking recipes. Some recipes may use egg whites or an egg substitute in place of the yolk. If you choose the protein route, be sure to add enough to make up for the lost yolks.
The pie serving has enough calories with all of the sugar and butter that adding frosting or cream cheese frosting can get you into extra calorie space. One way to avoid this is to find good pudding recipes that are low in fat and low in calories. The best option is to completely remove the decorative glaze and use a healthier layer. Fresh fruit is naturally sweet and, when combined with a light layer of skin, can be a tasty alternative to conventional frosting. Strawberries are a great choice for chocolate or vanilla cookies. Crushed pineapple goes well with a light angel cake. Another delicious option is cinnamon-baked apples. Healthy nuts like walnuts work well with low-fat whipped cream.
Most people will agree that a slightly sweet angel cake is the easiest option for a standard cake recipe. Carrot cake usually turns out to be a breeze too, with nuts, carrots, and a lack of chocolate. But in some recipes, carrot cake can have as much sugar, butter, and cream as a regular chocolate cake. By replacing small ingredients, almost any cake can be reused as a healthy alternative.