Low-Cal Cake? Desperate for suggestions.

I know you can add diet coke to chocolate cake and it makes it like 100 calories without the icing or vanilla cake with diet sprite. you dont add the egg or oil.. just the mix and a can of diet whatever. ive made it before it works and you really cant tell a differemce

Honestly I'd just have a small piece and enjoy it. The low-cal cake recipes I've tried have not been good. I do think cupcakes might be a good option-- why don't you want to do that? I've seen some pretty impressive decorated cupcakes.

http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/

Try Chocolate Covered Katies website - she has some amazing recipes :-)

I agree with the poster above - carrot cake could be a good one? I will go check some of my collection, see if I can find any lower calorie recipes for you :-)

Really you only have one birthday a year so one slice of cake is not going to undo everything - just make sure the rest of the day you eat low calorie to balance it all out?

No-fuss chocolate fudge cake
This fudge cake recipe contains no eggs, no milk, no butter and no fuss! This cake tastes just like the expensive versions sold in cafes. There is no butter to cream, no milk used and no eggs are required either. You just mix it all up in one bowl. If you have 'nothing in the pantry' you can still have your cake and eat it too! This is a rich tasting chocolate cake with the texture of a good 'gooey' fudge cake. Enjoy the following:

1 and half cups plain flour
3 tablespoons cocoa
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon white vinegar
6 tablespoons oil (I use canola)
1 teaspoon baking soda
half teaspoon salt

Turn oven to 180 C. Grease a 20cm tin well. Dust inside the tin with a little flour. Tap out excess. Put the flour, sugar, cocoa and water in a bowl. Add vanilla, vinegar, oil, baking soda and salt. Mix with beaters until smooth. (Mixture is runny) Pour into the tin. Bake 35 to 40 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes then take out of tin, and ice with your favourite icing.

Honestly I'd just have a small piece and enjoy it. The low-cal cake recipes I've tried have not been good. I do think cupcakes might be a good option-- why don't you want to do that? I've seen some pretty impressive decorated cupcakes.

+1. Eat some yummy cake for your birthday, just have a reasonable portion. I eat a giant cupcake from a local bakery about once a month and I am still able to meet my calorie/macro goals on average. Totally worth it!

eta: cupcake bakeries are hot right now, so I think there are lots of people who love them and don't view them as restrictive or inferior to a slice of cake. I have always loved cupcakes! Embrace the cupcake :happy:

Honestly I'd just have a small piece and enjoy it. The low-cal cake recipes I've tried have not been good. I do think cupcakes might be a good option-- why don't you want to do that? I've seen some pretty impressive decorated cupcakes.

I agree. It's okay to take a "day off" on your birthday an enjoy a bit of regular, well made cake. You've done great so far, losing 54 pounds, and it's not going to ruin all of that for you to eat some extra calories.

I also agree with the cupcakes. Some of the stores here have done amazing displays with cupcakes arranged and decorated to make one, big design (flower, bee, Elmo, etc).

And, if it won't hurt your mom's feelings, you can alway discretely scrape off some of the frosting. She still gets to decorate the cake and show it off, you can let her know how beautiful it is, but then not eat all the frosting.

I would also go for angel food cake, mostly because I love it!

You can also replace the oil in cake with apple sauce or pumpkin puree. If you get a cake mix and then mix it with one 14.5 oz can of pumpkin puree (not pie filling) it is delicious! For muffins/cupcakes bake at 350 for 18 minutes. Or for a cake pan probably increase the time but I usually make muffins. I love the pumpkin mixed with lemon cake but you can use any cake mix: chocolate, spice, carrot etc. Then you can have a lower calorie cake and your mom can decorate it to her heart's delight!

It's okay to have a piece of cake on your birthday. This should be a lifestyle change and you can't give up cake forever? Just try to limit it to once a month or once every couple of months!

Angel food cake with strawberries, or any fruit really, sounds great to me! However, if you are making the cake at home from a mix, there are plenty of ways to reduce the calorie count without sacrificing all the pleasurable aspects of birthday cake. My favorite is to use a mix, preferably chocolate, and just substitute equal amounts of applesauce for the oil and use only one whole egg with an extra white. The cake comes out super moist and actually needs no frosting. Great with fruit! Still up there on the sugar, but hey, can't always have everything, right?

ETA: My kids prefer the applesauce chocolate cake to the oil version

bump for later sounds nice

How about a healthy cheesecake? http://foodartcreation.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/low-fat-low-calorie-but-delicious-cheesecake-why-yes/

I really love those angel food cake mixes with the strawberries, bananas, and pudding. You can used sugar free strawberry pie filling, sugar free pudding, and then the cake isn't bad. It's beautiful in a punch bowl (I think it's called Punch Bowl Cake!), and it's really pretty for spring. It gets rid of the pesky icing which is where a lot of the extra calories tend to add on.

I'm also a freak for grandma's banana pudding. I made it for a family gather with lowfat whipped cream, pudding, and low fat vanilla wafers and it was not a terribly bad dessert in terms of calories, though I still had to budget for it in my day.

wow great suggestions for cakes and the just limit how much you have works in theory. However, what about those of us who can not help but consume more then your fair share of the ooey gooey delicousness we do exist. For some of us self control is very difficult. I can pass on the bread and pasta even the meat. But dessert is something I could eat all day everyday. Bring it on.

That would be where I'd have to invest in some smaller loaf pans. Oh, wait, I did! I know what you mean about hard to resist, but sometimes it really does just boil down to self discipline. Of course, letting the runny-nosed two-year-old help in the kitchen makes a difference. Nothing is tempting enough to get me to eat after him! :sick:

Bump

I don't want to do cupcakes because my mom's a cake decorator.

I understand that, but I guess I don't understand why she can't decorate cupcakes-- I know a couple of cake decorators and they both do designs with cupcakes as well. One way is to group them all together so they're touching and then decorate the top just like you would a whole cake, and another way is to do a mini decoration on each one. If you type "cupcake decorating" into Pinterest you'll get a ton of ideas.

http://fewjapan.com/event/vintage-cupcake-decorating-with-few/

http://www.thecompletecupcake.com/home/tag/baby-cupcake-cake/

Ok... so a few ideas for you:
1) Eat a smaller portion of the real cake
2) Cook yourself Thin has a few cake recipes that use grated veggies and ground nuts to replace some of the unhealthier ingredients, also I think they tend to use a meringue frosting instead of buttercream on a lot of the cakes. I've made a few. I like the cake recipes, but the meringue frostings are a bit to sweet for me. I have to cut back a bit on the sugar, add extra vanilla extract.
3) Cooking Light has some recipes that are a bit lighter.

"Eat a smaller slice" is not a helpful suggestion. I'm not an idiot. A smaller slice does not neccesitate low cal, just perhaps lower cal than the whole.

well color me confused. if eat half a slice of 500 calorie cake, i eat 250 calories. but somehow, eating a full slice of some nasty "low-cal" cake that gives me the same 250 cals is somehow better? When is 250 cals not 250 cals? When it's in the MFP forums, I guess.

Honestly, your ticker shows you've had tremendous success and you've earned the right to celebrate your birthday with whatever cake you want, calories be damned. With this much weight lost I'm sure you realize that nobody got fat from overeating on one day. I'd enjoy my day, celebrate with good friends and family, I the only reason I'd touch my calorie log would be to document what a terrific blowout day I'm enjoying. It's a official MFP rule that birthday calories don't count.

But it's your b-day, so if you don't want yummy cake, you don't have to have it.

Sigh. I have a few friends who like to sabatoge my progress,

heh