Healthier Chocolate Avocado Cake
When it comes to baking, the most common ingredients that come to mind include butter, sugar, and flour — whether you’re making cake or cookies or bars, or even truffles and frostings! Well today, I’m here to tell you that those ingredients are totally replaceable — Exhibit A: this Chocolate Avocado Cake!
This Healthier Chocolate Avocado Cake is made without any butter or oil whatsoever, is made with a better-for-you alternative to regular white sugar, plus it’s 100% whole grain!
In this recipe we will use:
- Avocado to substitute the butter and oil, while also adding fiber and nutrients.
- Truvia® Cane Sugar Blend to replace the regular white sugar (it has 75% fewer calories per serving than sugar!)
- Whole Wheat Flour in place of bleached white flour, which not only adds fiber and nutrients, but flavor and texture as well.
Thanks to Truvia® for sponsoring this post, and thank YOU for supporting the brands that keep Desserts With Benefits going! All opinions are mine and mine alone!
Over the 7½ years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve been asked countless times,
“Jessica, what can you use instead of butter?”
“Is there a substitute for oil?”
Yes and yes!
While it’s important to mention that it really depends on the recipe — for example, applesauce works great in cakes but not cookies — for this Chocolate Avocado Cake recipe in particular, avocado works like a charm!
Avocados alone have a neutral yet “buttery” flavor. Plus, they can help lower cholesterol, are full of vitamins, minerals, healthy fats, and antioxidants to protect against cancer. Sounds a lot better than a stick of butter or cup of oil, right?
*nods head*
Best of all, it works in cake by adding an incredibly moist texture. And cake is always the way to go 😉
^^ After blending the wet ingredients for the cake
When I first saw a Chocolate Avocado Cake, I was enamored and immediately saved it to my bookmarks. When I actually looked at the recipe a few weeks later, I noticed it contained 2 cups of sugar, white flour, and only half an avocado. I feel like if the name of the recipe is “Chocolate Avocado Cake” then avocados should be the main ingredient!
So I decided to develop my own recipe. A recipe that used a lot less sugar, 100% whole grains, and a lot more avocado!
I went to the grocery store and stocked up on the ingredients I needed. I used:
- Whole wheat pastry flour to replace the all-purpose flour
- Truvia Cane Sugar Blend to replace the white sugar
- 1½ avocados to replace the additional butter
I like to bake using 100% whole grain flour because it contains more fiber and nutrients. Plus, it keeps you fuller for longer, which means you’ll be satisfied after one slice of cake rather than the whole pan (which is exactly how I feel when I eat dessert at a bakery… I just want more, more, more)!
I also like to bake using less sugar, which is why I used the Truvia Cane Sugar Blend. It’s made with cane sugar as well as Truvia Natural Sweetener (stevia leaf extract, erythritol), and each serving has just ¼ the calories of regular sugar. You only need to use half as much as you would regular sugar too! Because the last thing we need is a sugar-rush and sugar-crash.
This Chocolate Avocado Cake is super chocolatey, perfectly sweet, and nutritionally balanced with healthy fats, whole grains, lots of fiber, and a hit of protein!
It’s so dense and full of flavor, it honestly shocked me… and I’m the one who baked it. I’m definitely going to make this during the holidays with my family, and maybe again for my boyfriend’s family when I visit them during the holidays! Heck, I’ll probably even make this cake for my friend at her holiday party in a couple weeks. This is for sure a crowd-pleaser!
Healthier Chocolate Avocado Cake
Ingredients
- 180g (1½ cups) Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
- 96g (½ cup) Truvia Cane Sugar Blend
- 40g (½ cup) Unsweetened Dutch Processed Cocoa Powder
- 2 tsp Double-Acting Baking Powder
- ¼ tsp Salt
- 280g (2 medium) Avocado
- ¾ cup Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
- 2 Large Eggs
- 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and spray an 8” cake pan with cooking spray.
- In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients.
- In a blender, add the wet ingredients. Puree until smooth. Pour over the dry ingredients and fold together until fully incorporated.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 40 minutes, or until the surface springs back when tapped. Let cool in the pan for 30 minutes, then flip over onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
- Frost with your frosting of choice. Serve and enjoy! Store leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days.
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This healthier Chocolate Avocado Cake is just as sweet, rich, and chocolatey as your favorite classic chocolate cake, except this is made without the butter, oil, regular white sugar, and bleached flour!
Enjoy! I think you will 😉
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With love and good eats,
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– Jess
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Indulge − no strings attached!
Wooow … this is such a fabulous idea of substituting Avocado’s to Butter ….. guilt free eating if I may say so 🙂 The chocolate cake looks delicious!
Cheers
Yummmm! Love the avocado!
This cake sounds so cool! I’ve never tried avocado in a chocolate cake, but I can definitely see how it would work wonderfully. Plus it’s healthy! Definitely a win-win. 😀
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Can I special order this from you?
Keep DWB going please! Great job!
Jessica… My two favorite recipes so far have been this one (it will be my birthday cake this year) and the buckwheat personal protein cake. Any way you could think of a personal avocado cake? I think I’m not alone in saying it would be an awesome idea!!
Thanks so much Colleen, I’m so glad you liked the recipes!! 🙂
Can I use xylitol and spelt flour for this cake
Xylitol won’t be as sweet as Truvia, but if you’re looking for a sugar-free recipe, just use Truvia spoonable. Truvia is 2x as sweet as sugar/xylitol/erythritol/etc. so it’s not a 1:1 ratio for substitution.
As far as spelt flour, I’ve never used that before so I can’t be sure. I just googled whether it can sub WWF and apparently it works! I hope you like the recipe Anne! 🙂
can i make it vegan?
I haven’t tried it so I can’t be totally sure. You can try using a vegan egg replacer for the eggs! 🙂
Is there a companion frosting recipe?
Not on this particular post, but I have a ton of icings/frostings here on the blog!
https://dessertswithbenefits.com/category/icings-frostings-spreads/
I would’ve never thought of using avocado in a chocolate cake recipe!! I guess I need to spend more time on my cooking skills haha I’ll try this recipe out soon too, thank you!
Hi Jessica,
First, I want to say that I love your website! I just finished making the Chocolate Avocado cake. It came out fudgey and looked soo good 🙂
Just finished eating the cake and I must say this is a big winner for me. Healthy, light, and tastes like the real deal. I am so sticking with it. Will try other variations like lemon cake, wallnut, vanilla, etc. Amazing recipe, thank you Jessica!
Oh and what a great way to utilize avocados! I buy them in a sack and by the time I get to the last ones they are often already too bad. This way I can make a cake and freeze it for the right moment. What a great deal!
Omg yayayay!! I’m SO so happy to hear you liked the cake! You’re a genius — this cake turned into a lemon cake or vanilla cake sounds divine <3
Can regular cocoa powder or cacao powder be used? If I understand correctly the dutch processing negates the health benefits of cocoa…Thanks!
I’ve never used cocoa or cacao in this recipe so I can’t be sure. Feel free to try it out though! 🙂
I USE 280G OF PEELED AND UNSEEDED AVOCADO IS THAT CORRECT??
THE CAKE TURN OUT A BIT BITTER…
Did you make any ingredient substitutions? Like the sweeteners? It shouldn’t be bitter…
What is the texture of this cake ment to be? A skewer came out clean and bounce back but it was very dense,almost pudding like!