For those following a ketogenic lifestyle, finding satisfying and compliant snacks can sometimes feel like a challenge. However, with a little creativity, you can enjoy delicious snack cakes that fit perfectly within your macros. Keto snack cakes offer a delightful way to indulge your sweet tooth without derailing your health goals. This article explores a variety of keto snack cake recipes, from simple blender cakes to decadent layered creations, providing options for every palate and skill level.
The Magic of Keto Baking
Keto baking relies on replacing high-carb ingredients with low-carb alternatives. Almond flour and coconut flour are popular choices for replacing traditional wheat flour, while sweeteners like erythritol, stevia, and monk fruit provide sweetness without the blood sugar spike. Understanding these substitutions is key to creating successful keto snack cakes.
Easy Keto Chocolate Snack Cake: A Blender Marvel
This unassuming and foolproof recipe comes together in seconds in your blender. It is perfect for a quick morning or afternoon snack. The beauty of this recipe lies in its simplicity. You simply blend the ingredients, bake, and enjoy, making it an ideal option for busy individuals.
Key to Success: The quality of your cocoa powder is crucial. Avoid using old, bitter cocoa powder, as it will negatively impact the taste of your cake. Opt for a good quality cocoa powder to ensure a rich, chocolatey flavor.
Keto Cake Recipes to Explore
The world of keto cakes extends far beyond basic chocolate. Here are a few recipes to check out:
Read also: Easy Low-Carb Cheese Crackers
Low-Carb Banana Coconut Mug Cake
This mug cake is delicious, easy to make, flavorful, and packed with nutrients. It’s one of those recipes that you simply have to try in order to appreciate it.
Coconut Carrot Chocolate Raw Cake Bars
These raw vegan chocolate and carrot cake bars are the perfect sweet treat for any season! Made with only 8 wholesome ingredients, these raw vegan bars are perfectly creamy, low in carbs and super delicious!
Raw Vegan Chocolate Carrot Cake
This raw vegan cake is made with lots of healthy ingredients and comes together quite easily.
Low-Carb Chocolate Cake With Berries
This low-carb chocolate cake has the perfect soft texture and a light cacao taste with a strong flavor of berries. It’s loaded with healthy nutrients, low in sugar, zero gluten and works great as a meal replacement.
Delicious Apple Carrot Snack Cake (Keto & Whole30)
This apple carrot snack cake is just one of those things that is very regular yet somehow elevates the mood every time.
Read also: Keto Calorie Counting: A Detailed Guide
Easy Raw Vegan Carrot Cake
This Raw Vegan Carrot Cake is a no-bake paleo recipe that tastes natural and rich!
Low-Carb Apple Carrot Pie (Easy & So Good!)
This low-carb apple carrot pie is all about enjoying a low-carb dessert that smells and tastes amazing, plus it’s ridiculously easy to make.
Keto Ding Dong Cake: A Nostalgic Treat
This delectable Keto Ding Dong Cake features tender layers of coconut flour cake with a creamy filling and a sugar-free chocolate glaze. It's just like your favorite snack cakes but so much better for you! This recipe is an update to a previously popular cake, modified to be even more accessible and delicious.
Tips for the Best Keto Ding Dong Cake:
- Coconut Flour: Coconut flour varies brand to brand, so you may need to adjust the batter with a little less or a little more liquid. You want the batter to be on the thick side but still easily spreadable in the pans.
- Baking: As with any keto cake recipe, it’s important to make sure you don’t over-bake it. Watch it carefully in your oven, testing it early. The best way to know it’s done is to touch the top of the cake. If it feels firm to the touch, remove it immediately.
- Flour Alternatives: If you would prefer a cake made with nut or seed flour, try making the layers with the batter from Keto Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake. Just spread the batter in two pans, rather than three, and watch it carefully. You can also use a keto cake mix, if you prefer.
- Cream Filling: The cream filling requires gelatin to be firm enough not to ooze out between the cake layers. Make sure the gelatin dissolves completely in the water and the mixture cools a bit before adding it to the whipped cream.
- Glaze: I like to add a few tablespoons of allulose to the glaze, in addition to the powdered sweetener. This helps keep it from recrystallizing as it cools. If you cannot access allulose, that’s okay. It will work as written but you may get some grittiness in the glaze after it has been refrigerated.
Keto Spice Cake: A Taste of Autumn
This is the best ever keto spice cake recipe, full of fall spices while super-moist and delicious! This cake evokes memories of childhood and autumn. The key to a great spice cake is using fresh, high-quality spices and it is important to get good quality fresh spices.
Spice Spotlight:
- Cinnamon: Cinnamon has been prized as a spice for thousands of years. In ancient times, it was highly prized and valuable. In fact, it was considered worthy of the gods.
- Allspice: In actuality, it's a berry, picked before it's ripe from a tree (the Pimenta dioica). The berry is dried and made into a powder. It's called "allspice" in English because Europeans thought it tasted like a mix of spices.
- Nutmeg: This fragrant spice comes from the seeds of a dark evergreen tree. It too is used to spice all sorts of foods, including stews, breads, puddings, you name it.
- Cloves: This spice actually comes from the flower buds of a tree (Syzygium aromaticum). Originally, like so many of these spices, they came from islands in Indonesia.
St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake: A Keto Makeover
This easy keto cake recipe is rich and incredibly buttery, yet still low carb enough to fit into your healthy diet. This cake, which is really more like bars, is deceptive in its simplicity. It doesn’t look like much but it tastes so good. And if you love keto cheesecake, you’ve got to give this a try. Pair it with a few fresh berries and perhaps a little whipped cream, and everyone will love it!
Read also: Magnesium Supplements for Keto
Tips for Achieving Gooey Perfection:
- Cake Mix Option: In the conventional recipe, the cake portion is usually made with boxed cake mix. And there are some pretty great keto cake mixes available these days. But I know not everyone has access to these products. So I have provided two different version of this recipe, one with cake mix and one with the cake made from scratch.
- Under-Bake: If you truly want a gooey butter cake, make sure to under-bake it. Don’t wait for that filling to firm up, take it out of the oven while the center is still quite jiggly. Keep your eye on it as every oven is different and baking times are only ever a guide.
- Added Butter: I highly recommend the added butter in the filling. Because low carb sweeteners don’t bake like sugar, the filling can end up more firm than the conventional gooey butter cake. The additional butter really helps this keto version.
- Sweetener Considerations: The sweetener you choose can make or break many a recipe, but this Gooey Keto Butter Cake is a bit more forgiving. You can use any granular or powdered sweetener, but there are a few things to keep in mind. Changes in sweeteners can affect the baking time, so keep your eye on them. Allulose can also cause the cake to brown a little more quickly. Erythritol will make the filling a bit more firm, whereas allulose may make it softer and gooier.
General Tips for Keto Baking
- Almond Flour: If you want to make the cake from scratch, use good fine almond flour for the best consistency.
- Sweetener: The cake portion takes a granular sweetener and the filling needs a powdered sweetener.
- Protein powder: A little protein powder gives the cake part better structure. Both whey protein and egg white work well, and most plant based powders work too.
Expanding Your Keto Dessert Repertoire
Once you've mastered the basics, don't be afraid to experiment with different flavors and textures. Consider trying:
- Keto Lemon Cake: A low-carb copycat of the famous Olive Garden Lemon Cream Cake.
- Keto Marble Cake: The stunning zebra stripes makes this Keto Marble Cake an absolute showstopper.
- Keto Pecan Pie Cookies: These keto blondies are gooey and chewy, and everything you want in a low carb dessert bar.
- Keto Blondies
- Keto Fat Bombs: Decadent one-bite treats that are high in healthy fats and low in carbs.
- Keto Coffee Cake: Featuring homemade keto brown sugar, this coffee cake is truly divine.
- Keto Lemon Pound Cake: Add as much or as little lemon flavor as you desire.
- Keto Mug Cake: Ready in one minute.
- Keto Chocolate Cookies: Of all keto cookie recipes, this one is by far the most requested.
- Keto Brownies: Learn how to make the perfect keto brownie.
Keto Desserts and Health
People who have diabetes can enjoy desserts regularly, provided they monitor their blood sugar levels and choose desserts without excess sugar in them. Keto desserts are a fantastic option, as they have no added sugar in them or use processed sweeteners.
Depending on what kind of diet you follow, keto desserts may be a good option. While most aren’t low in calories, they use whole food and natural ingredients in them.