Low sugar birthday cake ideas....

[cheesehead in recovery]

Its my husbands abuela...(grandmother) birthday and virtually everyone invited is "borderline" diabetic. I looked for splenda cakes -- and all seem to be cheesecakes, which don't go over so well well this crowd. Does anyone have a real cake made with little or no sugar? Angel food cakes?

Thanks!

[morwen]

You can use your favorite cake recipe and replace half to 3/4 of the sugar with splenda. If I'm using a recipe that calls for part of the sugar to be mixed with fat/ eggs, I'll use the real sugar there and replace the rest with splenda. But the biggest head exploder for diabetics when it comes to cakes isn't the cake itself, but the icing. Go for a low sugar cake that can be served with out icing, topped with fruit instead, or powder some splenda in a food processor, cover the cake with a doiley, sprinkle with the pulverized splenda and remove the doiley leaving behind a design.

Many grocery bakeries carry sugar free angel food cakes and these can be really dressed up with fresh or macerated fruit and plain whipped cream flavored with an extract, or a really nice fruit coulis.

[Super Salad]

Since you referred to abuela, I am assuming the family is latino is origin. How about a Brazo de Gitana? The filling is usually a mixture of cream cheese and whipped cream. You could use splenda or a natural jam in the filling to sweeten it. Also the cake itself is not that sweet. I also make a chocolate one (you could use a diabetic mousse or make your own for the filling) and dust with a mixture of unsweetened cocoa and powdered sugar and splenda. Since it isn't iced you'll avoid the problem that Morwen pointed out.

[masha]

Yes, a regular Angel food cake is the way to go, especiallye because, sside from staying away from sugar, diabetics should adhere to a diet that promotes cardiovascular health -- i.e., low in fat. We've got 3 type 1 diabetics in the family and Angel Food cake is one of our "go-to" choices in these situations. It can be topped with strawberry sauce, served on the side, for those who feel it is otherwise too plain.