5 Healthy-ish Carrot Cake Recipes (2024)

FAQs

Is carrot cake good for health? ›

The ingredients in carrot cake work together to promote cardiovascular health. Carrots contain potassium, which helps maintain healthy blood pressure levels, while walnuts often included in carrot cake recipes are a good source of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids.

NHS guidelines state that three heaped tablespoons of cooked carrots counts as a portion, which is about 60g. This suggests that a whole cake contains more than eight portions of carrots, so a largish slice ought to count as one of your five-a-day.

Yes, you can use olive oil instead of vegetable oil, and it's a substitute you should try and make often. This is because the nutritional value of olive oil is substantially higher than that of vegetable oil.

Is it better to use butter oil in carrot cake? Normally I'm all about the butter, baby. But when it comes to homemade cakes, oil is typically the better choice. Vegetable oil produces a more moist, tender cake than butter.

A Health Breakfast to Start The Day Right

If you hunger for a plate of fragrant carrot cake or chye tau kueh, choose the plain white carrot cake (402 Calories) over the black, (556 Calories); it's just as delicious, but over 100 Calories lighter.

Carrot cake isn't really any less healthy than a white cake or a chocolate cake. Arguably, it's slightly more healthy because of the addition of carrots and sometimes pineapple. However, it does contain a cup of oil and two cups of sugar, and that's just in the cake.

Potatoes. Potatoes don't count towards your 5 A Day. This is the same for yams, cassava and plantain, too. They're classified nutritionally as a starchy food, because when they're eaten as part of a meal they're usually used in place of other sources of starch, such as bread, rice or pasta.

While most nutrition experts and botanists say that potatoes are a vegetable, a years-long debate over whether they should be considered a grain or part of another food group has raged on, often in the name of public health — and especially in the United States, where more than 40 percent of people age 20 or older are ...

Canola oil is the most popular baking oil as it's stable at high temperatures, is cost-effective and has a very natural flavour. It also has only 7% saturated fat and contains omega-3s. Choose organic where possible even if it's a little more pricey.

What happens if I use olive oil instead of vegetable oil in a cake? ›

In general, we don't recommend using olive oil in baking recipes that call for vegetable oil. Olive oil is perfect for strongly flavored desserts like olive oil cake, but vegetable oil's neutral flavor makes it ideal for providing baked goods with the fat they need without affecting the recipe's flavor.

Most cake mixes call for oil, but butter will bring in amazing flavor. To substitute butter for oil in baking just melt the butter, measure it, let it cool, and add it as you would the oil. Compared to oil, butter will create a cake with a firmer, cakeier texture.

Angel food cake gets its lift from beaten egg whites. No egg yolks and no butter mean the cake contains no fat. And without the fat, the cake is also lower in calories than say pound cakes, cupcakes or ice cream. A homemade angel food cake isn't difficult to make and tastes far superior to most store-bought varieties.

In a word, no, healthy cakes aren't possible, because so many of the common ingredients are high in fat and sugar. But if you don't want to always make blow-out dishes, then there are little tricks and substitutions you can make that will make a difference.

Desserts are a delicious way to treat yourself and don't have to be off-limits. To make them part of a healthy diet, keep portions small and choose options with minimal added sugar as often as possible.