by Sun Meilan

Created on: February 13, 2013

Cakes and cookies often play an important role in Western people’s diets, but unfortunately, they are almost always calorie-laden and are a major factor in the battle against obesity. Due to the high amounts of fat and sugar, there is no such thing as a truly healthy cake, but you can at least attempt to make it healthier by substituting apple sauce for either the oil content or the

eggs. The following tips will help you make a successful, yet healthier cake. 

How apple sauce can be a substitute for fat

It may seem strange to think that apple sauce can be a substitute for oil or eggs when it is of a very different texture. However, as Stack Exchange explains, it can do so because oil and eggs bind the flour in a cake in such a way that they inhibit the formation of gluten, which is necessary if you want to avoid your cake from being too chewy. Apple sauce contains pectin, which can also help to inhibit the formation of gluten, provided that you get the proportions right. If you add too much apple sauce, the resulting cake will be jelly-like; if you add too little, it will have the consistency of bread. 

Practice first

Don’t wait until you have a special occasion for which you are making a cake to start using apple sauce. It can take a little time to get used to both getting the proportions right and the resulting taste. You probably won’t want to substitute all the oil with apple sauce — you may want to try replacing just half of it to begin with, even if the recipe suggests otherwise. Once you are happy with the results, you can go ahead and ask others to give their opinion.

Don’t use it in place of butter

Apple sauce can be used as a substitute for oil and eggs, but not for butter. The reason, according to Stack Exchange, is that butter contains natural emulsifiers that apple sauce just can’t mimic. Unlike oil, it also has an irreplaceable taste; apple sauce is therefore fine to replace oil, but not butter.

Mix all the wet ingredients before adding to the dry

For best results, mix the wet ingredients together before adding them to the dry ingredients rather than mixing them in separately. As LiveStrong suggests, this ensures that the wet ingredients are properly mixed. You can then add them slowly to the dry ingredients to avoid lumps. 

Make your own apple sauce

By adding in apple sauce, you are cutting down on the fat content of the ingredients, but if you don’t watch the sugar content, you are replacing one issue with another. You can solve this by making your own apple sauce and watching how much sugar you add. If you do decide to go for the shop-bought variety, then choose unsweetened apple sauce, which should have a lot less sugar in it.

There is no reason not to try apple sauce to make a relatively healthy cake; it just takes a little bit of experimentation. You should also bear in mind some of the above factors to avoid disappointment.

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