How to make healthier cupcakes

The Associated Press has a cupcake recipe posted for orange-buttermilk cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. They also have this advice to make your cupcakes healthier:

It's not at all unusual for a cupcake recipe to include a cup or more of butter. And that's before you even start making the frosting. However, with a couple of tweaks you can make a cupcake that's a bit lighter and healthier.

For starters, ditch the butter in favor of canola oil, which has far less saturated fat and contains healthier monounsaturated fats.

In many cases, you also can cut the total amount of fat by replacing as much as half of it with fruit butters and purees, such as applesauce or apple butter. These work well because they contain lots of pectin, which like fat helps to keep baked goods tender.

By replacing half the all-purpose flour with whole-wheat flour, you can give cupcakes a healthful boost of fiber and other nutrients, without compromising taste and texture.

Whole-wheat pastry flour (rather than bread or all-purpose) is preferable in cakes and pastries because it has less protein, which tends to make baked goods tougher and chewier.

Comments

Jennywenny said…
I particularly like dorie greenspans perfect party cake, which is on the lighter side. I find that many of my experimentation with lower fat and whole wheat flours result in more of a muffin than a cupcake (carrot cake being the exception) and that you're better off trying not to have too much frosting, since that is the really unhealthy part!
Iva said…
Nooooooooo! Not the butter! Let's not substitute the butter please! Butter is actually healthy - recent studies have shown no correlation between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease. Plus butter in cakes contributes greatly to the taste and flavor. That being said Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World rocks.