The perfect THM low carb chocolate snack cake. A recipe devoted to all of my Trim Healthy Mama readers! It’s easy, too.
I have readers from all walks of life, from all sorts of backgrounds and upbringings and countries. I am truly fascinated by the diversity of my readership. Mind you, the vast majority of you are women from Western countries, between the ages of 25 and 60. I am sure I could make plenty of generalizations about the people who manage to find and follow this blog. But they all come here for their own personal reasons and with their own unique experiences. And I think that speaks volumes about the increasing growth and recognition of low carb living as a healthy alternative to the Standard American Diet.
This recipe is actually written for a particular subset of my readership. That is not to say that it’s not appropriate for anyone on a low carb diet, because it most certainly is. And that is not to say that it is not delicious for anyone, no matter what diet, because it most certainly is. It’s just that this particular recipe was developed for those that follow Trim Healthy Mama and like to use the Trim Healthy Mama products like the Baking Blend, the Sweet Blend, and the Gentle Sweet. I have many wonderful followers from THM and they are often asking me how to use and/or substitute those things in my recipes. So I felt duty-bound to play with these ingredients and see what I could come up with.
I also wanted to make an easy low carb chocolate snack cake that would appeal to kids and adults alike. I had the Sara Lee snack cake in my head as a model. You know the one the one, that single-layer chocolate cake the chocolate frosting piped on in pretty star shapes? It’s typically found in the freezer aisle and is full of all sorts of junk, but people love it. I love the idea of “snack cake”, something that’s simple enough and healthy enough to offer to kids when they come home from school or to any unexpected guests that drop by. But a cake that can also be special enough to double as dessert if necessary. That’s the kind of cake I wanted to make.
And this definitely fit the bill, although I do ask you to not look too closely at my piping of the frosting. I am not particularly talented in that area and although I followed the instructions on Wilton for a “star fill in” decorating technique, I had plenty of little gaps between my stars that needed re-filling in with additional blobs of frosting. I am sure some of you could do much better!
For those of you who have yet to try the THM products, you can check them out here on the THM Store. The baking blend is a useful low carb flour alternative that is meant to measure exactly like flour. And the Sweet Blend is a combination of erythritol and stevia that is typically twice as sweet as sugar. There are many other useful low carb ingredients such as gluccomannan, gelatin, whey protein, peanut flour, stevia, and xylitol. It’s definitely worth a look!
THM Chocolate Snack Cake
Ingredients
Cake:
- 1 ½ cups THM Baking Blend
- ⅔ cup cocoa powder
- ¼ to ⅓ cup THM Sweet Blend (depending on how sweet you like it)
- ¼ cup unflavoured whey protein powder
- 1 tablespoon instant coffee granules (optional, helps boost chocolate flavour)
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 3 large eggs
- ½ cup butter melted
- ¾ to 1 cup unsweetened almond milk (if your batter is overly thick, add a little more almond milk)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Frosting:
- ½ cup heavy cream
- 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate chopped
- 4 ounces cream cheese softened
- 6 tablespoon butter softened
- ¼ cup THM Sweet Blend powdered, if possible
- 2 tablespoon cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
Cake:
- Preheat oven to 325F and grease a 9x9 inch square baking pan (you can also use 8x8 inches, but your cake will take a little longer to bake).
- In a large bowl, whisk together the Baking Blend, cocoa powder, Sweet Blend, protein powder, instant coffee, baking powder, and salt.
- Stir in eggs, melted butter, almond milk, and vanilla until well combined. Spread in prepared baking pan.
- Bake 20 to 30 minutes, or until cake is set and a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool completely.
Frosting:
- In a medium saucepan over medium heat, bring cream to just a simmer. Remove from heat and add chopped chocolate. Let sit 5 minutes and then whisk until smooth. Let cool to lukewarm.
- In a large bowl beat cream cheese and butter until smooth. Beat in sweetener, cocoa powder and vanilla extract. Add chocolate mixture and beat until well combined, scraping down beaters and sides of bowl as needed.
- Spread or pipe onto cooled cake.
Notes
Total fat: 18.50g
Calories from fat: 166
Cholesterol: 80mg
Carbohydrate: 9.18g
Total dietary fiber: 5.96g
Protein: 6.60g
Nicole says
Hi, I just made this cake today for my daughter’s second birthday. It turned out a very iffy okay, but only because of the frosting (which was from another recipe). The cake itself was almost flavorless, very dry, and crumbly. I followed the recipe exactly so I’m not sure what I did wrong. Pretty disappointed, I was really looking forward to a nice chocolatey, moist cake, but instead got dry little bricks of chocolate-ish crumbs. Hoping to try another THM cake next time, hopefully my next attempt will turn out better.
Carolyn says
I will be very honest and say… it’s the THM baking blend. It is very dry and hard to work with. You can make THM cakes with almond flour and they are much better. You should try one of my other cakes.
Robin says
FANTASTIC!!! I thought it was better the second day and left out of the frig. I used almond & coconut flours and flaxmeal in equal parts for the cake mix. Just a delicious cake and frosting. I LOVE a great frosting and this makes it! I make up my own THM sweetener from a recipe. I added extra to the cake as it tasted like it needed it. Everyone is different. Thank you!
Carolyn says
So glad you liked it!
Laura says
Can this be frozen?
Carolyn says
I don’t know, I’ve never tried. Unfrosted, it certainly can.
Ashley says
I was so excited to try this. The cake (and few cupcakes I made) turned out good. A little dry, but that was my own fault (overcooked).
However, the frosting was a different story. Three attempts, and all three went in the trash. So much wasted ingredients. I think it was the butter. The only other time I’ve seen a texture that nasty in icing is when I made buttercream with butter instead of shortening. 🙁
Either way, cake is great. I just have to figure out how to top it!
Carolyn says
I honestly don’t know what the problem could be but I’ve always made frosting with butter and think it should ONLY be made with butter, especially since shortening is a chemical horror show. I know my frosting very well and I used a similar method in THIS recipe. https://alldayidreamaboutfood.com/low-carb-chocolate-frosting/
I stand by my butter based frosting, as do many of my readers.
Shirley Hammond says
I just made the snack cake. I tasted a little corner of it and it tastes quite bitter to me. I also mixed up the icing and found it to be terribly bitter. I used Pyure stevia blend. I tried to make it into “powdered” by putting it in the blender first but it really didn’t get very powdery. I kept adding more of the sweetner but it still tastes a bit bitter. Perhaps after it sits the sweetness will be absorbed more into the frosting. Hope so.
Carolyn says
It’s probably the Pyure, as stevia can taste very bitter in chocolate.
Angie says
This is by far my new favourite THM chocolate cake recipe! It’s soooooooo good! Thanks for another amazing recipe!
Carolyn says
Delighted to hear it!
Iva says
What can you substitute the whey protein with?
Carolyn says
Egg white protein.
Stephanie Deal says
I made this over the weekend and my cake was dry. 🙁 It’s my first time using the THM blend and I was a little bummed. The chocolate frosting however is AWESOME. I piped my frosting onto the cake like you did and mine doesn’t look as pretty as yours, but the taste and texture is dynamite. 😉 I’m hoping to try it again cause the taste is yummy and I’m going to cook it 5 min less this next time. Thanks again for sharing this recipe Carolyn.
Carolyn says
Good call, it may be your oven temp. Also, try adding another tbsp or so of butter if you want a more moist cake. THM Blend does tend to be drier than using all almond flour or an almond/coconut combo.
Nicole says
Can you substitute coconut oil for the butter? My sister is lactose intolerant, and I would like to include her when making these.
Carolyn says
You should be able to. Not sure what you will do about the frosting, though.
Rhonda says
Hi, I have THM super sweet and THM gentle sweet. Any suggestions since the recipe calls for THM sweet blend? Thanks in advance
Carolyn says
Before they created Gentle Sweet, the Super Sweet was called Sweet Blend. So that’s the one!
Rita says
I just started following you, so I don’t want to be a buzz kill here, but you aren’t figuring the net carbs correctly. Your recipe calls for some sugar alcohols, which are also subtracted from total carbs.
Carolyn says
Yes, actually I am. I’ve already subtracted the erythritol. I make that statement in my nutritional disclosure. But thanks for trying to be so vigilant! 🙂
Anna says
Can this be made the day before and put in the refrigerator until the next day? Just wondering if it would alter the texture at all…?
Carolyn says
Absolutely!
Amanda says
Is this considered a FP snack?
Carolyn says
No, i think it’s an S recipe.
Kelli says
Is there a sweet blend and just out of stock? I see gentle sweet and super sweet blend. Is it a mix of the two?
Thank you for your time in putting this together.
Carolyn says
I believe that the sweet blend is the “super sweet”.
Susanne says
New to THM…. Excited to try this! I do not have any protein powder. Can I sub something else? I do have 0% plain Greek yogurt if it is used just for added protein. Would that work?
Carolyn says
The dry protein powder helps things rise and hold their shape in the absence of gluten (which is a protein). So the yogurt won’t work. You can skip it, but your cake may be more dense.