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.
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
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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!
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.