Sunday, July 4, 2010

Gimme Some Sugar!

It is really, really hard to make a good cake without sugar!  But, my friend Alissa's mom is diabetic.  Not just kinda-try-not-to-drink-soda diabetic, but fridge-full-of-insulin diabetic.  So when Alissa asked me to bake her mom's birthday cake, sugar was totally off limits. 

Sure, Splenda is an option, but it changes the chemistry of the recipe.  It's better to use half sugar & half Splenda, but that wasn't an option.  So, I added some buttermilk for a leavening boost and the cake turned out pretty good, just a little more dense than usual.  To lighten it up, I spread sugar free chocolate pudding in between the layers. Frosting though, was another story since powdered sugar is the key ingredient in almost every type.

Most of the diabetic recipes I looked to recommended either simply using half the normal sugar in a recipe (gee, thanks for nothing!) or frosting a cake with Cool Whip.  Gag.  Cool Whip is 100% synthetic, I can't do it.  I cringe just thinking of how Cool Whip feels on the roof of my mouth.  So I whipped up an improvised caramel cream cheese frosting.  To pretty it up, I added a ring of chopped pecans and drizzled on some the sugar free caramel syrup I used to sweeten the frosting.  I was really surprised at how good it was.  There were 2 other cakes at the party, both from a popular local bakery, and no one even touched them.  Everyone had a slice of the sugar free cake!  




*In case you missed it, the recipe was posted in the comments!

3 comments:

  1. wow, kelly, this looks gorgeous AND delicious!! good job! Erin

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  2. Amazing! Any chance you would be willing to post your recipe? My brother-in-law is diabetic and may really enjoy this!

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  3. Sure thing! Most of my recipes are from Better Homes & Gardens. The one for this cake is their Best Ever Chocoate Cake, available here: http://www.bhg.com/recipe/frosting/best-ever-chocolate-cake/ Just switch out the milk for buttermilk and the sugar for Granulated Splenda. As for the frosting, I didn't use a recipe, I just made it as I went, so I whipped one package of regular cream cheese, one stick of unsalted butter, a half cup of granulated Splenda and a lot (sorry, don't know how much!) of Smuckers sugar free caramel syrup. I just kept pouring in the syrup until it was sweet enough. Give it a try! It was really good!

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