Trying to watch my weight, gained 5 kilos this month but I LOVE cake. I want some but sugar is a key ingredient and I'm no chef. What can I put in it instead?Okay, what alternatives to flour and sugar can I use?
Recommended Answer:
It's not worth the bother. Those fake ingredients taste awful. Just have some real cake in moderation.Other Answers:
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/sugar-free-baking_n_1228591.html
- You can use one of the sugar substitutes such as Splenda, but sugar is not the only ingredient that causes weight gain. Sugar is fat free, but it's not calorie free. Cakes also call for some type of fat such as oil or butter. Your best bet is to find a reduced calorie recipe.
- The carbs from the white refined flour is going to convert directly into sugar by your body...I would go with unbleached flour and agave nectar.
- sugar is NOT your major reason for gaining weight eating cake!! It is the flour!! you can use splenda for baking measure for measure! but that only cuts out a tiny bit of the carb grams of cake. A serving of cake is 1/12th of the whole cake. As a diabetic I have half a serving!! that is half the calories and half the carb grams! the american diabetes dessert cook book considers anything 35 to 50 grams of carb as suitable for diabetics, but they cut all the salt and fats out of the desserts. they use splenda instead of sugar. I do not see the difference between these nasty tasting things and real cake at the same grams of carbohydrate! So just eat half a serving of real cake with real icing!! Only do this once every other week! If you can't get rid of the real cake, make it and take your half serving and take the rest to a neighbor!
- There is no substitute for sugar--not only does sugar make the cake sweet, it also reacts chemically with the other ingredients to produce...cake. You can sometimes substitute honey, mashed bananas, molasses or agave syrup in some recipes--but you aren't going to save any calories by doing so. Just make your cake with sugar the normal way--then cut it into small pieces and put each little piece in an individual zip-loc bag and FREEZE them--all but one. Eat that one, Freeze the rest--then you'll have them on hand and can eat ONE AT A TIME when you want cake--and you won't overdo it.
- In most recipes, you can cut way back on sugar and still get acceptable results. If you cut back too much, however, your cake will be gross and then it's not even worth eating. I recommend cutting back by almost half. Skip the frosting in favor of whipped cream or a dusting of powdered sugar. If you bake the cake in a bundt pan it will be moist and good. Just give most of it away and enjoy a couple small slices.EDIT: you can substitute things like nut flours, coconut flour or even flours from other whole grains. There really is no substitute for sugar. No matter what, you have to use sugar or it won't turn into cake. Sure, you'll find recipes that don't require sugar, like that Weight Watchers thing that uses a cake mix and a can of Diet Coke, but guess what's in the cake mix? Sugar, flour and hydrogenated fats. You really are better off finding a decent scratch recipe and just having a small serving of good cake. You can try things like substituting the fat for applesauce or using coconut flour, but cake has calories. That's OK.
- Substitute applesauce for water and egg and skip the sugar. it sounds weird but it will come out super moist and delicious. Otherwise you can try using a sugar substitute like Truvia, made from the stevia plant. Just remember that it's sweeter than sugar so you don't need as much.
- I recently made a cake using 100% coconut sugar, bought at my local grocery store. I loved the taste of it, I do not know if you would like it but it definitely has a distinctive taste which added to the flavor (at least for me). The best part of this was that it is a 1=1 substitution so you do not end up using cups and cups and more cups of the stuff. As for the flour, I used the Gluten Free flour of King Arthur Flour.
- Agave nectar. You don't need to use as much because it is sweeter than sugar. It also has a lower glycemic index so your body breaks it down differently than white sugar.
- There isn't one for straight up substitutions. Artificial sweeteners taste horrible and are worse health wise than sugar. Honey, applesauce or molasses can be used in some recipes but you've got to adjust other things or they don't rise or have the wrong texture.There's no good sub for flour either. Ground nut meal can be used which is healthier, but it has the same or higher calories.eta: Listen to Christin K. Make the cake as usual, cut it into small portions and freeze them individually.
