Sugar Free Chocolate Cake
My mother is a diabetic, so for her 50th birthday party, I wanted to have a chocolate cake for her. Ideally, it was going to be a chocolate cake with strawberry mousse, but after tasting the chocolate cake, I didn’t want to try strawberries just yet. Quite honestly, I haven’t had time to play with this yet, so she’s getting my first attempt. Well, I my second attempt since I didn’t like my first attempt enough to let it slide and decided to take the time to rebake it even though I was running out of time.
The first time I made this, I forgot I had unsweetened baking chocolate in the cupboards and tried using regular semi-sweet chocolate chips. Yeah, don’t do that. Well, the batter wasn’t bad with this, it just had more of a peanut butter-chocolaty feel more than straight chocolate. I also made the mistake of not looking too closely at the directions and I doubled the recipe since I was going to use two 9inch round baking pans. Don’t do that either. Doubling the recipe was a bad idea because I ended up with way more batter than I needed, which was the real reason I scrapped the first cake. Upon baking, the cake overflowed (but didn’t destroy) and it was a little too moist for my likening. Think quicksand moist. On top of the peanut butter-chocolaty favor, I wasn’t too happy with it.
So I decided to redo it and I have to say that was a great idea. This was about the time I remembered I had the unsweetened chocolate and that made a world of difference. I originally thought that there was too much butter in the recipe, but I forgot that the chocolate chips added some of that favor as well. Plus, the unsweetened bars gave the cake more of a chocolate look than the chips did.
This recipe is really just the Chocolate Cake recipe from my Better Home & Garden’s New Cookbook, but instead of using the sugar, I substituted it with Splenda. I also didn’t use as much the second time around since I ended up being a little under 1/4 cups than I needed, so I didn’t worry about it. It’s for a diabetic, oh no I didn’t use all the sugar. We’ll see if I’ll need to retract that later.
My original idea for the cake included a strawberry mousse, but I’m running out of time and my recipe is just too complicated for that (I was planning on using the Raspberry Mousse recipe, substituting strawberries for raspberries, but next time). However, I’ve been thinking about this so what I am going to do is get either a cream cheese or cheesecake or vanilla pudding mixture, do the mousse like I normally do, but add in some sliced strawberries. It may not be a strawberries mousse, but at least it’ll have some strawberries in there. I’m going to use frozen strawberries since that’s what I have, but I’m sure fresh would work just as well. Plus, with the frozen ones, after they’ve thawed out a bit, they’ll be a little mushy so they’ll blend better with the mousse. At least I hope so.
Ingredients:
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup butter or margarine
1-3/4 cups Splenda
2 eggs
3oz unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and lightly flour two 9×1-1/2 inch round baking or one 13x9x2 baking pan; set pan(s) aside. Stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat the the butter or margarine with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add sugar; beta til well combined. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Beat in chocolate and vanilla. Add dry mixture and 1-1/4 cups water alternately to beaten mixture, beating on low speed after each addition just until combined. Pour batter into the prepared pan(s).
- Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean. Cool layer cakes in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes. Remove layer cakes from pans. Cool thoroughly on racks.
Sugar-Free Frosting
Ingredients:
1 (1.4oz) package sugar-free instant pudding mix
1-3/4 cups milk
1 (8oz) package cream cheese
1 (8oz) container lite frozen whipped topping, thawed
Directions:
- In a medium bowl, combine pudding mix and milk. Mix well and let stand until thickened.
- In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Add pudding and mix well. Finally, fold in whipped topping.