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Low Fat Chocolate Pound Cake

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I am obsessed with this low-fat chocolate poundcake. Despite it’s low-fat profile. It’s everything a pound cake should be in texture and crumb: velvety, dense and moist.

Low-fat-Chocolate-Pound-Cake-via-Bakers-Royale1 copy

Lets talk flavor, to make this low-fat I used 4% cottage cheese for a portion of the butter and it turned out great. This recipe is actually a chocolatey tweak of my Low-fat Pound Cake from last year. Admittedly, I’m not a low-fat dessert person, but the low fat pound cake was a hit, so I thought – shoot, a chocolate version is a must. Why? Well no real reason; other, than if you haven’t noticed I sort of love chocolate.

Low Fat Chocolate Pound Cake from Bakers Royale1

Low Fat Chocolate Pound Cake from Bakers Royale 210x260

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Low-fat Chocolate Pound Cake

Yield: Makes one 10 cup bundt shaped pound cake or two 9x5 loafs

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, melted and cooled
  • 1/2 cup 4% cottage cheese, pureed to smoothness
  • 3 cups sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 6 eggs
  • 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Hershey's)
  • 1/4 cup Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate cocoa powder

Directions:

Preparation

Butter pan and lightly dust with cocoa powder.

  1. Place butter in a saucepan over low heat to melt; set aside. Place cottage cheese in a food processor or blender and pulse until pureed and no lumps remain; set aside.
  2. Fit stand mixer with a paddle attachment and add melted butter, cottage cheese and sugar into stand mixer bowl. Mix on medium-low for 1 minutes or until well combined. Add in vanilla and salt and mix until well combined. While mixer is running, add eggs in one at time and mix well after each addition.
  3. Place water in a sauce pan and heat until just simmering. Add in both cocoa powders and stir until completely combined. Add cocoa powder mixture into main mixture and mix until combined. Turn mixer down to low and keep mixer running while gradually adding in flour.
  4. Pour batter into pan and bake at 350 degrees F until inserted cake tester comes out free of crumbs, about 60-70 minutes. Allow cake to cool in pan for 10 minutes. Turn out cake onto a cooling rack with topside down. Cool completely before glazing

A few notes:

  • I finished the cake with a Valentine's spin, but feel free to keep it simple with a chocolate glaze. To finish like the picture, simply use the glaze from this recipe and tint it with pink food coloring (I used Americolor's Deep Pink). Then top it with a simple piping using Wilton's 1M tip, give the tip a quick circular swirl and top with a few raspberries.
  • To lower the fat in the cake I swapped out some of the butter portion for 4% cottage cheese (if you want to remain "full" fat just flip that portion back to butter). To use the cottage cheese make sure you puree it in a food processor or blender to a smooth texture. There should be no lumps left behind or they will bake into your cake as such and reveal itself when sliced.
  • I used a 10 cup bundt pan, but if you prefer to make the chocolate pound cake in the shape of a loaf use two 9x5 pans.

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Comments

  2. I can’t believe it withstood a ladder-fall and pretty much stayed in tact! And your pic looks nice! I can’t believe you were so displeased by it but we’re our own worst critics but seriously, it’s a great pic!

  3. That’s… that’s a bad picture? Your pictures are all excellent but you must hold yourself to such a high standard if that’s bad! This looks yum though, and I’ve just saved the classic low-fat pound cake as an easy everyday cake to eat, um, several times a day.

  4. Your “bad” photos are 10x better than my good photos :)

    I’m so impressed you dropped a cake from a ladder. I think I need to get more creative with my food photography!

    xo

  5. LOVE your blog, LOVE your recipes and beautiful photography, but I just have to ask this question: How does a cake that has 3 sticks of butter in it qualify for low fat?

    • Avatar for Naomi Robinson

      Naomi replied: — January 17th, 2013 @ 12:50 am

      Joan-It’s only low-fat compared to its classic counterpart that uses one pound of butter.

  8. Low fat can withstand high impact! Who knew? I think this picture AND the one of the smashed cake were gorgeous. I’m always so impressed with your glaze work, it looks so flawless and professional (not to mention tasty)!

  19. You are way to hard on yourself, that picture was beautiful and I really liked the Valentine’s day spin on it. This is going into the “TO MAKE” file!

  23. Loving that smashed cake photo!! That’s typically what a cake looks like for me after I go to town and eat it :)

    Pound Cake was something my mom always made for us for breakfast when we were growing up – but CHOCOLATE pound cake. Oh that’s a whole other story. I need some of that in my life immediately!

  28. I love, love, love your website but how is this low fat if there’s 6 eggs and 1 and 1/2 cups butter? Am I missing something?

    • Avatar for Naomi Robinson

      Naomi replied: — January 17th, 2013 @ 12:48 am

      Lola-It’s only low-fat when compared to it’s classic counter part that entails one pound of butter.

  29. I was greatly admiring this frameable photographic masterpiece and had to do a double-take when you were claiming it to be … wait, what were your words? (I need to look again) … “just awful”?? You are a funny one. 😉 Great photo and great blog, Naomi. As always, keep up the outstanding and inspirational work. 😉

  31. The picture is awful?! I think it’s beautiful and very much the style of your other pictures. Out of curiosity, why don’t you like it?

    The cake looks delicious, and the fact that it’s low-fat makes it that much more appealing.

    • Avatar for Naomi Robinson

      Naomi replied: — January 17th, 2013 @ 1:12 am

      Oana- First off, thank you! To answer your question,I don’t love the styling for the exact reason you mentioned-it’s very much like my other pictures. As a person who is always looking to improve, this shows no growth. Aside from that factor, the styling is wrong for the cake – it doesn’t show off the cake decorating (although, hopefully the pound cake crumb is visible in the sliced pieces). The lighting is wrong: (1) too dark (2)there is lack of dimension in the picture (3) and as a result of 1 and 2, the un-sliced cake portion looks plastic.

      Having said all that, practice-practice-practice, right? :)

  33. I am 110% behind this pound cake. And it sure took a pounding from that mallet – both photos (smashed and unsmashed) look gorgeous in my eyes. I would have unabashedly dug in hands first to that smashed one. Somehow it already deconstructed just made me want me to shove it in my face twice as bad…

  35. I’m just learning about photographing my food , so I would love it if you could tell me what is wrong with the picture you didn’t like. My eye isn’t well trained enough to notice anything but I would like to learn.
    The cake sounds amazing and I am going to give it a try! Thanks!

  40. Looks delicious! Think I can use this recipe with the Mini Bundt pan? My tasting team loves getting Mini bundts and not having to deal with cake slices.

    • Avatar for Naomi Robinson

      Naomi replied: — January 20th, 2013 @ 6:58 am

      Libby- Mini bundts will work just fine. I would start checking for doneness at 40 minutes though.

  46. I was thinking the same as Christina. Your bad photos are 1000x better than my good photos! (seriously) This cake looks amazing. And the smashed version of it speaks volumes. So pretty and so awesomely messy. I would love to be chomping on that mess 😉

  47. Your cake and photos look amazing! I just did the math, though, regarding fat content and the butter and eggs work out to 306 grams of fat. If the yield for the cake is sixteen pieces using the bundt pan, this means the fat content per slice is 19 grams. Yikes!

  48. No need to use food coloring in the glaze – just use cranberry juice instead of orange!

    P.S. We enjoyed the cake, and I substituted even more of the butter with lowfat cottage cheese instead of 4% – it was still very tasty.

Naomi Robinson

Avatar for Naomi RobinsonWelcome to my cozy corner where baking meets random thoughts and musings. I’m a self-taught baker sharing all things sweet (and some savory—okay, and cocktails) with a whisk in one hand and a camera in the other. More about Naomi »

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