Mia Bakes: Healthy Cinnamon Roll Loaf Cake

 Craving for some warm, sweet, soft and fluffy cinnamon rolls, but not keen on all the time needed for kneading and dough proofing? 

How about getting one in the form of a fuss-free quickbread / loaf cake? 

And what if I'm telling you that it's a healthy, low calorie, reduced sugar one? 

So let's get over with the ingredients (for 1 standard loaf pan of 10 - 12 slices) to get started!

For the cake

250g plain yogurt 

(not greek, but not too watery)

205g plain flour

45g oat fibre 

(or replace with more flour)

80g baking stevia blend

60g vegetable oil

2 eggs

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp almond extract

a pinch of salt

recipe adapted from theclevermeal

For the filling/swirl

120g applesauce

(I used homemade, but you can get store-bought)

65g brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 mixed spice (optional)

First up, make sure that your ingredients (especially yogurt and eggs) aren't too cold, if not the batter might form curds while you mix. Well, not that it's the end of the world anyway, you can still mix in the flour and bake it off, though.

In a clean bowl, add in your applesauce, brown sugar, cinnamon and mixed spice and stir to combine. Then, set this aside. 

Next, in a large clean bowl, crack in your eggs and add in the sugar, whisking until the sugar granules has dissolved. Then, add in the oil and whisk until the oil is fully incorporated before adding in the (not too cold) yogurt, vanilla and almond extracts. There may be a little curdling (especially if your yogurt is too cold) but no worries, just add in the rest of the dry ingredients and fold with a spatula until everything is just combined. 

Line your loaf pan with parchment paper or spray it down with some non-stick cooking spray. Then, pour in half of the batter and level it out with your spatula. Get your bowl of applesauce-sugar mixture and spoon half (or slightly more than half) of the mixture over the top of the cake batter. Spread them out as evenly as you can. Then, pour the remaining cake batter over the top and level our the surface again with your spatula. Then, drop dollops of the remaining applesauce-sugar mixture over the surface, before swirling the dollops all over the cake to give it a marbled look. You can do so by simply sticking a butter knife right down the centre of the loaf pan and just swirling it around randomly. 

Then, bake at 160 degrees Celsius (fan setting) for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

 

Allow the cake to cool off slightly in the pan before taking it out of the pan and letting it cool completely on a wire rack. 

As you can see, due to high yogurt content, this cake is ridiculously moist (hovering at the brink of being mushy, actually) and soft. I know the slices looked gummy, as if they've not risen properly, but that's actually because my knife has smoothen out the moist crumbs with my slicing motion.

Yes, it's THAT moist. 

Flavour wise, if you're a fan of cinnamon rolls or apple pies, then this is your jam! 

While the yogurt has made the cake extremely tender and moist, the applesauce-sugar filling has packed the cake with a strong punch of the tart applesauce (since I've made my own, I added some sliced of lemon to make my applesauce tart), with a lovely brown sugar and cinnamon sweetness. 

Best of all, due to the reduced sugar and reduced oil recipe, 1 decent slice of the cake is only barely 170 kcals, and packs a decent amount of protein and fibre! 

Till then,

Mia Foo

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Mia Bakes: Lemon Blueberry Loaf Cake

Seeing that the best before date on my lemon curd is nearing, I decided to do another bake with it in order to finish the remaining few tablespoons of it (once and for all). But seeing how much my family end up loving this extremely light and yummy loaf cake, I might just need to buy more lemon curd instead. HAHA! >.<||

This is going to be a super easy, one bowl recipe that takes less than 10 minutes to whip up and another 20 to 25 minutes to bake. So let's get over with the ingredients so we can get started!

For 1 (8 x 4 inch) loaf (10 servings), we'll need:

140g all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

80g castor sugar
(I replaced 60g of it with baking stevia)

60g unsalted butter, soften at room temperature

50g greek yogurt
(I used low-fat)

2 eggs

1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
(may add another tbsp if you'll prefer more lemon flavour)

2 tbsp lemon curd 

(for swirling, may use more)

80g fresh blueberries 

(you may use dried blueberries too)

First up, add your soften butter and sugar into a clean large bowl and beat it with a whisk until it turns pale and fluffy. Then, beat in the greek yogurt before beating in the eggs, one at a time, until well combined. Add in the lemon juice and give it another whisk until combined, before adding in all your dry ingredients (except for the blueberries) and folding until you're left with just a few pockets of flour before adding in the blueberries and giving everything a few more folding until just combined.
The batter is going to be pretty thick so the blueberries shouldn't be sinking too much, but if you're worried (and using dried blueberries/fruits), you may stir in a tablespoon or so of flour (from the 140g) into the dried fruit before folding them into your batter.

Once your batter is combined, spread half of the batter into your prepared loaf tin (sprayed down with cooking spray and lined with baking paper) before dropping dollops of the lemon curd all around the batter. Then, pour in the remaining half of the batter and smooth out the surface before sticking a chopstick into the middle and swirling it around to mix in the lemon curd. My 2 tbsps of lemon curd didn't show up much in the cake, so I'll suggest that you use more if you're a fan of a more citrus-lemony flavour.

Lastly, give your loaf tin a few taps on the counter to remove any air bubbles in your batter and send it into your oven that's pre-heated to 175 degree Celsius to bake for around 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Mine baked for 22 minutes.

With the addition of greek yogurt, the cake turn out extremely tender, fluffy and moist. Together with fresh lemon juice and blueberries, gave the cake a citrus touch and made the taste lighter and refreshing. 

But perhaps I could have used a smaller loaf tin to get a taller (and skinnier) looking cake. Heh!

Till then,

Mia Foo

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