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Healthy Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Fudge Frosting

May 16, 2017 · Natalie 71 Comments

This 5-ingredient party-perfect vanilla cake recipe is healthy disguised as decadent underneath a luscious layer of sugar-free chocolate fudge frosting!

Do you remember these?

I didn’t think so. I even forget they exist sometimes.

They are the perfect example of how sometimes my favorite recipes get lost in the recipe archives and no one ever sees them or makes them or falls in love with their softfluffyvanilla goodness. Tra-gic.

But now that I am writing about those cupcakes, I actually remember making them quite well…

I remember standing on my kitchen island trying to get an overhead shot because that’s back when I actually thought you could make AND photograph food in the kitchen. HA! Now I know you must take the food to the light instead of the other way around. And the kitchen appliances. And the vacuum cleaner. And a roll of paper towels. And if there was a way to install a small sink by the window, that’d be great too.

I remember the tricky task of cleaning that purple frosting out of the blender trying not to let the blades and my fingers bump into one another. I also now know that the food processor is much better suited for making purple sweet potato frosting. Or vanilla sweet potato frosting. Or any color of sweet potato frosting.

I remember being amazed at how fluffy and delightfully dome-topped they turned out for being made of like 43% fruit.

Despite all those good times I never made a video for them. So that’s been on my to-do list for approximately forever.

But I get the question quite often “How can I turn these {insert flavor here} cupcakes into a full-sized cake?” in regards to my various date-sweetened cupcakes. So for birthday purposes and I-don’t-have-a-cupcake-pan purposes, we are transforming that easy vanilla cupcake recipe from small and round to square and sliceable. And sprinkled-topped, because why not?

Cupcakes → cake

It’s not a tricky transition, but there are a few important things I must tell you so you don’t end up with a crater in the center of your cake. A.k.a. failure of the cake-catastrophic kind.

Pan size. An 8-inch (round or square) pan works best for this cake. Anything smaller and it will be too thick -> not cook through in the center. Anything larger and it will be too thin -> look weird.

Multiply by 1 1/2. The original cupcake recipe just makes a half dozen, so in order to fill up a cake pan you need to do some ingredient multiplication. Don’t worry I broke out the calculator and took care of it for both of us.

Baking time. It does require a little more oven time than the cupcakes–about 30-35 minutes at 350F. Lightly touch the center of the cake and when it feels firm and not squishy/batter-y at all, it’s done.

No non-dairy milk. The original cupcake recipe uses 1/4 cup non-dairy milk, but you will not need that in this version. Which cuts the ingredient list down to a mere FIVE!

Don’t over-blend. Actually I feel like it’s more appropriate to say DON’T OVER-BLEND! After you add the oat flour, just blend for the briefest of blitzes. If there is some flour left on the sides just stir it in by hand. Over-blending will make for gummy slices of sadness, not cake.

Sprinkles. Okay this doesn’t actually affect the cake structure at all, but I just felt like they deserved a spot on this list. I used these. Feel free to make and use these. Or top it with fresh berries or fruit!

The Frosting

While I love purple foods a lot, I love chocolate frosting A LOT. So I overhauled my favorite fruity chocolate fudge frosting to make it thicker and creamier and just give it more…oomph! The result is so fudgy you could put it on top of anything and it would instantly become dessert. Oatmeal. Smoothie bowls. Muffins. Celery. Anything.

Sticking with the simple and made-in-the-blender theme here, the frosting happens with 4 ingredients + a high-speed blender + 30 seconds. Medjool dates for sweetness and thickness. Water because otherwise nothing is going to move (or you could use non-dairy milk, but it’s not necessary). Cacao (or cocoa) powder because chocolate. And the newcomer to this frosting party: almond butter. Stepping up the richness game of date-based frosting since right now.

You could use cashew butter instead, I was out *sniffle*. Or even peanut butter if you want it to taste like someone plastered the top of your cake with peanut butter cups. And why wouldn’t you?

The frosting will become firmer in the refrigerator, but still spreadable. Although I find if you put it in a jar and pop it in the fridge overnight it tends to decrease in volume and increase in spoon marks by morning.

Happy sprinkle-topped, chocolate-spread, slice-and-(maybe)-share cake making to you!

Heathy Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Fudge Frosting

★★★★★ 5 from 11 reviews

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes
Yield: 9 people 1x

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Description

This 5-ingredient party-perfect vanilla cake recipe is healthy disguised as decadent underneath a luscious layer of sugar-free chocolate fudge frosting!

Ingredients

Scale

Vanilla Cake

18 pitted medjool dates ((about 1 1/2 cups packed))
1 1/2 cups water
1 3/4 cups oat flour
1 1/2 tbsps baking powder
1 tsp vanilla bean powder ((or vanilla extract))

Chocolate Fudge Frosting

12 pitted medjool dates ((about 1 cup packed))
2/3 cup water
1/2 cup almond butter
2–3 tbsp cacao powder ((or cocoa powder))
Optional: pinch of salt

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Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350F.
In a high speed blender, combine the water and medjool dates. Blend until smooth.
Add the rest of the cake ingredients. Blend very briefly until just combined. Do not over-blend or the cake will come out gummy.
Pour the batter into an 8-inch square or round pan that is either greased or lined with parchment paper. Spread evenly.
Bake for 30-35 minutes at 350F.
Cool completely before frosting.
For the frosting, combine all the ingredients in a high speed blender. Blend until very smooth and creamy. Use as is, or refrigerate for a few hours to thicken.
Spread a generous layer of the chocolate fudge frosting on the cake. Top with sprinkles or fruit or whatever you like. Enjoy!

Other frosting options…
–Purple and made of potatoes
-Same as above but not purple
–Chocolate with a protein powder boost
-Creamy and caramel
–Filling turned frosting
–Chocolate and extra fluffy

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Frozen Pineapple Lemonade

May 11, 2017 · Natalie 17 Comments

Double fruity, extra frosty, and bursting with tangy tropical flavor–this Frozen Pineapple Lemonade is the perfect easy summertime blender beverage!
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Is it lemonade? Is it a smoothie? Is it a frosty? YES.

When I was a little tot and the uncommon occasion arose where I got to have a non-water beverage, lemonade was my jam. If it came in pink, I got pink. Did I know why it was pink? Nope. But when you are under the age of ten you don’t ask those kinds of irrelevant questions. It could’ve been purple with sparkly gold swirls and electric blue bubbles for all I cared. If it tasted like lemonade, it was lemonade enough for me.

What I was NOT okay with was limeade. I remember that traumatic citrus drink-swap experience all too vividly. What sort of restaurant offers limeade but not lemonade? One that 7 year old me will never visit again, that’s for sure. Me and limeade are good now, but it’s still not my first choice.

Anyways…lemonade needs to be made with not limes and it needs to be suh-weet! My short lived morning lemon water kick helped me become sorta okay with tangy lemon things, but sugar is a thing and in my frozen lemonade I’m going to use it. By sugar I mean fruit sugar. By fruit sugar I mean pineapple, of the frozen variety if we are going to be specific.

Frozen pineapple is super sweet but way less banana-y in flavor than bananas, which are always the first instinct when it comes to making frozen smoothie-ish things. I also dabbled in a coconut ice cube based version, but it wasn’t sweet enough and those muffin-shaped cubes (because apparently I don’t actually own an ice cube tray) melted in like 8 seconds while I was busy adjusting my camera for the ideal video angle. Ingredients gotta have more stamina than that to do a video shoot with me.

So frozen pineapple won. And the grand prize was being blended up at top speed with lemon juice and coconut milk to create something so thick and creamy and lemon dreamy!

If you aren’t borderline obsessed with coconut milk like me, feel free to swap in your favorite kind of nut/seed/whatever milk. OR…use coconut water! Sure it won’t be as creamy, but it will be especially sweet. And frozen pineapple has more creaminess power all on it’s own than you might expect.

This is one of those measuring-optional recipes, so don’t fret if you add a little more pineapple than called for or only zest 3/4 of the lemon. I like to blend, taste, and then adjust. Not sweet enough? Add more pineapple. Too ice-creamy (as if that exists)? Add more milk. You get me.

You may be wondering if it tastes like lemonade with a hint of pineapple or pineapple with a hint of lemon. That’s something that I’m still pondering too. I think the answer is that they meld so well, it doesn’t even matter. Just pinelemonapple-ing all day. That’s going to be a kombucha flavor one day, just you wait…

So break out your thick straw (or maybe even a spoon) because this one is double-fruity and extra-frosty!