A healthy and low fat chocolate cake recipe that tastes so sinful you will never believe it!
There is NO oil needed for this chocolate cake!
The recipe gets rave reviews every single time I make it… even from people who aren’t normally fans of healthy desserts!
It can definitely hold its own against any high-calorie chocolate cake from a fancy restaurant or cake shop, and no one ever guesses it isn’t full of fat and sugar.
Also Try These Overnight Oats – 15 Recipes
Bonus points: There are no crazy ingredients in this recipe.
No offense to my cauliflower based Healthy Chocolate Cake.
By using yogurt (I like nondairy yogurt) you can cut way back on the fat and empty calories while still retaining all of the moisture and richness of a traditional cake made with oil.
Years of experience have taught me that chocolate tastes much better when some fat is included, and therefore I chose to add a little nut butter to the healthy chocolate cake recipe as well (for allergy-friendly, you can use Sunbutter or Peabutter).
Can you think of a better way to spend one’s birthday (my birthday was this past Saturday) than taste-testing chocolate cakes?
I couldn’t, and so this is exactly what I did!
Anyways, back to the chocolate cake…
What was your BEST birthday ever?
Although my best birthday was probably my 16th, this past birthday came pretty close. When it started to lightning and pour rain around 8 PM, I was initially worried no one would show up.
But the rain quickly dissipated, and I had an amazing night in downtown DC with around 30 close friends, none of whom I knew a year ago.
It was completely terrifying to start over when I first moved to the area, and I think last Saturday was the first time I realized I finally didn’t feel like an outsider anymore.
P.S. If you need ideas for your next birthday, please feel free to steal my idea of spending the day eating chocolate cake!
Watch the video above for how to make a low calorie chocolate cake
100 Calorie Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
- 1 cup spelt, white, or gf ap flour
- 6 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp each: baking soda and salt
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar of choice or xylitol
- 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips, optional
- 1/4 cup yogurt (I like nondairy)
- 3/4 cup water
- 1/4 cup almond butter, peanut butter, OR allergy-friendly sub – For a nut-free cake, try my Vegan Chocolate Cake Recipe
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, and grease an 8-in square or round pan. Set aside. In a large bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, optional chips, and sweetener, and stir very well. (If your nut butter is not stir-able, gently heat it until stir-able.) In a new bowl, whisk together the nut butter, yogurt, water, and vanilla. Pour wet into dry and stir until just combined (don’t over-mix), then pour into the greased pan. Bake 25 minutes or until batter has risen and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out mostly clean. (I like to take it out when it’s still a little undercooked, let it cool, and then set in the fridge overnight. This prevents overcooking, and the cake will still firm up nicely as it sits.) If you can wait, I highly recommend not taking a taste until the next day… this cake is so much richer and sweeter after sitting for a day. Trust me! View Nutrition Facts
Notes
More Low Calorie Recipes
Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Bars
Cinnamon Sugar Pillow Cookies (vegan recipe)
Low Calorie Desserts – 10 Recipes
I so love this cake! I‘ve made it a couple of times now, and it comes out so moist and chocolately every time, incredible. I am not vegan, so I use heavy sour cream (35 % fat) or greek joghurt, so maybe it’s not 100 calorie, but what the heck. It’s so good. Once I made it as a sandwichcake, with an orange marmelade filling. Good combination. Thanks for this recipe Katie.
Dear Katie, Could I replace it with coconut fluor?
I don’t think so. Coconut flour cant’ really be subbed in recipes in a 1 to 1 ratio because it soaks up liquid.
So I needed a 9×13 for a birthday cake & doubled the recipe. The cake turned out PERFECT! I used the spelt flour as suggested and organic turbinado sugar. It was baked evenly, and had a great rise to it. I lined the bottom with baking parchment paper since she suggested putting it in the fridge overnight, I wanted it to pop out of the pan the next morning (which it did!). I only used half the amount of chocolate chips to keep the sugar content down, it still tasted great and was sweet enough that the kids gobbled it up!
Completely and utterly disappointed that the nutrional info is an absolute LIE. Next time you make a cake with nutrition you should state all the ingredients and not have us choose stuff out of thin air. I made this cake, it looks wonderful. But after adding up all the stuff I had to just pick out myself, its way over 200 calories for 73g.
I’m really not sure what you mean… It would be impossible for Katie to provide nutrition facts for every single variation of the recipe using every possible combination of ingredients. Using the basic recipe (not including optional ingredients, as is standard for nutrition labels), her calculations are correct.
Let me start by saying it was delicious. But after further investigation i think the 100 calorie name is a little decieving.
I calculated the calories myself and I am assuming you didnt include the chocolate chips when doing this (as you put optional next to them)
Otherwise the serving is so small its ridiculous.
I only used 1/3 cup choc chips in my calculations and 1/2 sugar half natvia and i got to 1900 calories for the whole cake which means you get 1/19 of a piece of cake for 100 calories.
But I am going to tweak it a little more and hopefully it will still taste as amazing as it did before.
I will try replacing the butter with apple sauce and use more sweetener less sugar.
but thanks for the inspiration
I made this cake yesterday and it is really delicious- maybe too delicious! I used a simple chocolate buttercream frosting recipe to go with it and my family absolutely love it. This will be my go to chocolate cake from now on. Thanks Katie! Your recipes are really great.
How many serves in the whole cake?.
Looks great. After you let it cool a little and put it in the fridge, is it still in the cake pan?
Tried this cake and it was so soft,moist and very tasty . Thanks for this best recipe. Second time I used whole wheat instead of maida and 16 dates +6 Tbs brown sugar for sweetness. The cake was tasty, fudgy and brownie like.
HI Katie,
Can whole wheat pastry flour be subbed out with the spelt flour? Also any swaps on the yogurt? I’m wondering if I could just omit it? What is the purpose of the yogurt? Tnks in advance 🙂
We haven’t tried it so honestly can’t say! Be sure to report back if you try!
Jason (media relations)