Healthy Baking Tips

In June I blogged about my cake making process with Herman (Herman the German Friendship Cake!) and since then I have been asked to be their Q & A nutritionist [click here for the official website]. As their nutritionist I will also be posting regular healthy baking tips - so you bake your cake and eat it too!

So, here's my first article.. I hope it gives a little inspiration on how to make your baking a little bit healthier :)

My Top 5 Healthy Baking Tips!

Baking doesn’t have to be unhealthy. Here are my top tips on how to either reduce the calorie content or boost the nutritional goodness of your baking.

1) Add fruit. Dried fruit is packed with antioxidants, nutrients and fibre and goes well in most baking dishes. Try cranberries or cherries in a cake and raisins or blueberries in muffins. There’s no reason why ‘treat’ foods can’t count towards your 5 a day too!

Apricot & Dried Fruit Granola Pots
- click here for the recipe!

2) Substitute the fat. Replace half the amount of fat (e.g. butter) used with either mashed bananas or apple sauce. Calories and fat are instantly reduced!

Oat & Date Slices
- click here for the recipe!

3) Cut the sugar. Calorie-free sweeteners such as Splenda or Truvia (from the Stevia plant) are a great replacement for sugar in baking – just check the packet of your chosen sweetener to see if they are suitable for heating (as some aren’t!) and experiment! When I made my Herman cake I used sugar to develop the batter mix (to feed it!) and then sweetener in the final cake mix.

My Healthy Blackforest Crumble will be uploaded *soon* - made with Freedom - 100% pure fruit syrup (less calories and lower GI than sugar)

4) Go easy on the chocolate. Adding bars of melted chocolate to your baking can seriously increase the fat and calorie content, so instead why not use mini chocolate chips – stir them into your baking, without melting first and then sprinkle on top. This way you have chocolaty tastes with every bite just without as many calories!

Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips - baked by Mollie (Personal Trainer)
- click here for the recipe

5) Reduce the portion size. Baking smaller muffins and cutting your cakes or desserts into smaller pieces will instantly reduce the calories per portion, with no compromise in taste – perfect.