Baking with Domino Light Sugar & Stevia Blend: Dark Chocolate Cake

When it comes to sugar, I want it to be real real or come from a natural source. I hate the taste of artificial sweeteners and I avoid it as much as possible ... for a variety of reasons. I've enjoyed Stevia for over a year now as a natural replacement to regular sugar, and it has worked well for most of my needs; e.g., iced tea & other beverages. But it's not so great for baking -- that required real sugar.

My husband's 40th birthday was coming up and I knew I wanted to bake him a cake using some new "cookie" cake pans that I received. The pans are really cute, allowing you to bake two cakes with icing in between to resemble a sandwich cookie.

I received a new product from Domino Sugar called Domino Light: Sugar & Stevia Blend, which is a blend of natural sugar and stevia (naturally sweet extract from the stevia plant). This blend can be used in baking, replacing one cup of sugar for each ½ cup of Domino Light -- essentially, cutting half of the sugar calories in anything you put it in! The true test, as always, is: how does it taste? I decided to bake a chocolate birthday cake using Domino Light instead of regular sugar. Everyone enjoyed the cake and I will be making it again!

Dark Chocolate Cake Recipe

(adapted from allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

2 cups boiling water
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 ⅛ cups Domino Light (Sugar & Stevia Blend)
4 eggs
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 3 - 9 inch round cake pans. In medium bowl, pour boiling water over cocoa, and whisk until smooth. Let mixture cool. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt; set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and Domino Light together until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at time, then stir in vanilla. Add the flour mixture alternately with the cocoa mixture. Spread batter evenly between the 3 prepared pans.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Allow to cool.

The frosting on the cake is homemade with peanut butter, but I couldn't use Domino Light because the recipe called for confectioners' sugar. The recipe is here, if interested.

The chocolate cake turned out AMAZING! I thought for sure I was going to to notice a difference in the taste with the sugar & stevia blend, but there wasn't an odd or off taste to the cake. Even though stevia has a distinct flavor, which you can taste out of the bag or packet of Domino Light, once baked with other ingredients it's not discernible. For particular recipe, Domino Light turned out to be a great replacement.

Domino Light Sugar & Stevia Blend Coupon

If you'd like to make the switch and save ½ the sugar calories from your recipes, you can download a coupon for Domino Light Sugar & Stevia Blend on the Domino Sugar Facebook page.

Domino Sugar Twitter Party

Join @Bookieboo & @ResourcefulMom on August 8, 2012 from 8-10pm EST for a fun twitter party with Domino Sugar to celebrate "how sweet life really is with sugar that tastes amazing, doesn’t lead to weight gain, and doesn’t have artificial chemicals" -- Mamavation has all the details -- Make sure to follow @Dominosugar AND @Candh_sugar with hashtag #DominoCHLight ... there's $500 in Visa gift card giveaways!

This post was sponsored by Domino Sugar. All opinions are my own.