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Irresistable Cakes

Featured Recipe: Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

3 simple steps to healthier cakes that taste great.

By Jessie Price, Food Editor, EatingWell

Lemon Poppy Seed Cake is a classic sweet treat. This popular Bundt seems innocuous since it’s often served with a simple glaze, instead of icing, but it’s not. The bad news first: This friendly little cake can pack a calorie- and fat-heavy punch, with several sticks of butter, sour cream, plenty of sugar and refined flour. The good news: This (and many cakes) are easy to make healthy and still be delicious.

The three fixes below brought this cake from heavy to healthy. And no one really noticed— our tasters swooped into the EatingWell Test Kitchen to finish it off each time we baked it.
3 simple steps to Healthy Cake Recipes:

• Substitute whole-wheat pastry flour for some of the all-purpose flour. It has all the nutritional benefits of whole grains—more fiber and nutrients than refined all-purpose flour. Plus it contains less gluten than regular whole-wheat flour, which means it makes more tender, delicate baked goods.
• We use canola oil, which is mostly heart-healthy unsaturated fat instead of butter, which is mostly unhealthy saturated fat in the cake.
• We also use far less oil (because like butter it contains a lot of calories). To keep the cake moist, despite the reduced fat we add nonfat buttermilk. Buttermilk helps keep baked goods tender, moist and delicious.

Here’s the final nutrition tally for our scrumptious EatingWell version versus a traditional Lemon Poppy Seed Cake:

A lot better, right? Some of my other favorite EatingWell cakes are:

One-Bowl Chocolate Cake (I love this one because it’s so simple you can whip it up at a moments notice, and it tastes great. Plus I usually have all the ingredients on hand.)

Cream Cheese Pound Cake (My sister, who is a food stylist and recipe developer here at EatingWell developed this one. It’s moist and rich with a deep confectionery vanilla flavor. Plus the quick cherry sauce that goes with it is killer!)

Chocolate Hazelnut Cake (I’m not that much of a baker, so part of the genius of this cake is that it always comes out looking pro! It’s just gorgeous with a little glaze on top and then a garnish of hazelnuts. Plus it’s intensely chocolaty with a hazelnut accent. Who doesn’t like that?)

Frozen Pineapple Upside Down Cake (I’m not going to lie…this one does take a bit of effort. But the results are great, especially if you love pineapple. This is a fun, playful cake that is great for a summertime party.)

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