Most of my female friends have children, and I’m always challenging them to come up with wholesome, homemade snacks that can replace some of the junk food kids crave. This summer the challenge was to come up with healthy popsicles, that not only keep them cool and hydrated, but to also keep them away from those dreaded neon colored, frozen and artificially flavored ice sticks and pops.
Honestly, those things scare me…with all of this artificial stuff in our food supply, it’s a wonder the kids don’t glow in the dark…
Now that school has started back up, I wanted to help my friends with some ideas on snack cakes, that can be easily packed into lunch bags or enjoyed as an after school snack. Kids just love the moist and creamy desserts and this one fits the bill.
With the cooler weather we experienced this week and the upcoming Holiday season, my mind began to think about those delicious scents of the season which include cinnamon, cloves and of course nutmeg. So when I wanted to come up with a snack cake, I decided it was going to be a moist and delicious spice cake.
In the past, I’ve also shared a great chocolate cake that can be eaten plain or topped with my easy and delicious chocolate frosting.
In these types of snack cakes I always use a vegetable oil instead of butter. The addition of butter gives a totally different texture which is more like a pound cake, and that is not what I was after here. I wanted a cake that could replace the Tasty Cake type of products that are moist and spongy, and using a little oil is definitely the way to go to get that type of result.
The beauty of these types of cakes is that they do not need icing at all, they are perfect just the way they are…but if you want to add another layer of sinfulness, go for it!
I find that spice cake goes so well with cream cheese frosting, so I have included my recipe for that too, but it’s totally optional.
Spice Cake (makes 1/4 sheet cake, 9″ square pan or 10″ round cake)
3 eggs (5.4 oz)
1 ¼ cups granulated sugar (10 oz)
¾ cup vegetable oil (5.3 oz) (or you can use 1/2 cup oil plus 1/4 cup apple sauce)
1 teaspoon vanilla or maple extract (.1 oz)
¾ cup lowfat buttermilk (6 oz)
2 cups flour (10 oz)
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
1½ teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground allspice
To make the cake, add all of the dry ingredients together and sift them well into a small bowl to make sure the spices are well mixed into the flour. In a separate bowl, add all of the wet ingredients and whisk well together. Then add the sifted dry ingredients and whisk everything together again until there are no lumps. Grease your quarter size sheet pan and add some parchment paper. Then pour in the batter and bake at 325°F for approximately 20-30 minutes until cake tester tests clean or the center of the cake springs back to the touch.
Cream Cheese Frosting
2 sticks of butter, softened
12 oz cream cheese, softened
4 teaspoons vanilla
1 ¾ cup powdered sugar, sifted
For the cream cheese frosting, put the softened cream cheese and butter into the bowl of your stand mixer and using the paddle attachment begin creaming them together. Next add the vanilla and then add the sifted powdered sugar a little at a time until it is all incorporated. Spread this on the cooled cake and chill for an hour then cut into snack wedges.
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