Tonight, I was feeling full and frugal thanks to all that chili I made earlier in the week. But, long about 9:00 p.m., I had a chocolate craving. A handful of chocolate chips was just not going to cut it, so I went looking for recipes.
Thanks to MyRecipes.com, I found this Cooking Light recipe for a chocolate cake that uses applesauce and bananas to keep it moist. Because I followed the recipe exactly — shocking, I know! — I’ll just provide a link.
How it turned out:
It’s good, but not great. Moist and relatively chocolately, it will do the trick when you are trying to be good and still have a little dessert. I do stress “little” — a serving is 1/16 of a 9 inch cake. (I cheated and had 1/8 of the cake, but as you can see below I still didn’t break the nutritional bank). I do think the instant coffee is the cause of a slight aftertaste, so I would recommend you leave that out. And a little cool whip always helps!
Nutrition information:
According to Cooking Light, a slice (remember that’s 1/16 of this cake) has 128 calories and 3.9 grams of fat (2.2g saturated fat). With 1.4 g fiber, 34 mg cholesterol, and 106 mg sodium, this cake is well within the nutritional guidelines for a healthy diet. Which means that, when I have cake for breakfast in the morning, I won’t feel any guilt.
Smart Shopping:
Because I had all the ingredients on hand, I had to backtrack to estimate the cost. I think that, even using higher end chocolate from Ghirardelli and organic flour and sugar, it penciled out to $6.00 or less. It helps that I buy baking staples in bulk and with coupons, so I always have what I need for cookie emergencies.
That bring’s this week’s total to about $23.00 (out of $86.00), though I think I’ll be putting the rest of the chili in the freezer for next week. Three days in a row is enough.
