Monday 13 January 2014

Healthier Cupcakes and Frosting


These little bite-size cupcakes look delicious with their mound of fluffy frosting on top, don’t they?

Would you be surprised that no butter or sugar were involved in the making of these? Well, it’s true! The cupcakes are made with low-fat spread and my latest kitchen find 'Truvia'. Have you tried it yet? It’s the natural sweetener made from the Stevia plant. I bought some sachets of the stuff and used that to sweeten my little cakes.

The frosting on top is actually thick fat-free Greek yoghurt with more Truvia sweetener and some blueberries mashed into it. The yoghurt was drained of it’s liquid overnight, making it thicker and better to hold it’s shape on top of the cakes.

I’m not sure how many calories are in these, but with low-fat spread and no sugar they will be much better than eating a full-sized cupcake, if you are trying to cut back.

Yield: 12 mini-cupcakes

Cupcake Ingredients:
125 grams self-rising flour
1 tsp baking powder
8 sachets of sweetener (I used Truvia)
125 grams low-fat spread (I used I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Light)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract (optional)
1 tbsp of any milk (I used almond milk)
Adapted from Splenda website

Frosting Ingredients:
250 grams 0% Fat Greek yoghurt
75 grams ripe blueberries
2 sachets of sweetener

Cupcake Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Line a mini cupcake tray with liners. Sieve together the flour, sweetener and baking powder and set aside.



In the bowl of a mixer mix the spread until it is soft and add the eggs. The mixture will look curdled, but keep beating for a few minutes. Add the extracts and beat in. Add the dry ingredients and mix through. At this stage the mix will come together and no longer look curdled. Add the milk and stir through. Spoon the mix into the prepared cupcake tray and bake in the oven for 12 minutes or until browned on top. They won’t have risen too much. Allow them to cool completely.



Frosting:
The night before making the cakes, line a sieve with paper towel and place the yoghurt in this, over a bowl. Overnight, excess liquid will have drained from the yoghurt leaving you with a thicker consistency to work with.



With a fork, mash the blueberries in a bowl and add in the yoghurt and sweetener. Mix together with a spoon and transfer to a piping bag, or food bag with the corner cut off. Pipe the yoghurt frosting on to each cake.




And there you have much healthier cupcakes to savour. They have a slightly denser consistency to ‘normal’ cupcakes but are still delicious, and the mound of sweet berry-swirled frosting on top compliments the vanilla and subtle almond flavours. Not bad for being so good! Enjoy…



I am entering these into this month's Alphabakes - hosted alternately by Caroline at Caroline Makes and this month Ros over at The More Than Occasional Baker. The letter this month is Y. Y is for yoghurt. I know the frosting is a 'garnish', but I think it makes up for more than 50% of the recipe, so I'm hoping they will let me off with this one!!

8 comments:

  1. Great tip with the yoghurt, not so convinced by the Truvia though :-(

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    1. I thought it was good, great replacement for the sweet stuff!

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  2. That frosting looks delicious! I love that these contain no butter or sugar. What does the Truvia taste like? Can you taste it in the cake? Thanks for entering AlphaBakes

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    1. The truvia gives a sweetness Ros, but it's a bit different to a sugar sweeteness - not in a bad way though!

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  3. Healthy, yet delicious. Thanks for sharing this recipe, i'm all for lighter bakes :-) x

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    1. Thanks Charlene, I think things might go pear-shaped come February lol!

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  4. Love the idea of topping the cupcake with yoghurt...even if it is healthy!

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