Healthy Mocha Cake with Mocha Frosting
This post has sponsored by Collective Bias, Inc. and Starbucks®. All opinions are mine alone! #SavorHolidayFlavors #CollectiveBias
This Mocha Cake with Mocha Frosting is infused with enough coffee and chocolate to make your taste buds fall in love. Coffee enthusiasts, gather around and rejoice! You get TWICE the coffee flavor in this double whammy mocha dessert. This cake is super fluffy and moist and the frosting is perfectly chocolatey and sweet, you’d never know it’s all sugar-free, low-carb, high-protein, and gluten-free too!
This Mocha Cake is just plain addictive. It tastes like it’s full of sugar, but really, it doesn’t have any sugar added! I wish I could hand you a slice right now through the screen so you can taste it for yourself, but that technology doesn’t exist. YET.
The cake itself is soft and delicate with a moist crumb, and is packed with deliciously sweet coffee-enhanced chocolate flavor. The frosting is smooth and creamy, and just like the cake, it’s got enough coffee and chocolate flavor that will make you go: one bite, two bites, thirtieth bite 😉
November is ending and December is upon us, so that means… bring on the desserts and hot mugs of coffee and holiday gift shopping!!! *jumps up and down*
If you’re like me and have surpassed the “coffee lover” nickname (I prefer “coffee QUEEN”), then getting coffee and coffee accessories for the holidays is always THE. BEST.
PERIOD.
Are you getting ready for a holiday gathering with friends and family? Or do you know someone as in love with coffee as some people are to their spouses? Then you should definitely take a glance through this gift guide — made by a coffee lover (me), for coffee lovers (you)!
I have never really appreciated how thoughtful personalized mugs were until my boyfriend got me one. It has my 3 favorite pictures of Cherry (my adorable pup!) on it. I loved it so much that he got me another, and another. I’m pretty sure another one is in my future…
And the syrups and ground coffee really depend on each person’s preferences.
Personally, I just like vanilla syrup in my coffee (I like to use my Homemade Vanilla Syrup!). I almost exclusively drink medium roast coffee, and I just found my go-to for the holidays: the Starbucks® Holiday Blend! It’s smooth, balanced, and rich, with sweet maple notes. Every sip celebrates the joy of the season.
Hover over the image below to look through Starbucks® coffee blends!
You’ll be sure to find something on the Starbucks® Holiday coffee line that fits perfectly into your holiday season, whether it’s getting together for coffee at a friend’s house, or making this coffee-infused dessert for your family. I found my Starbucks® Holiday Blend Ground Coffee (also comes in K-Cup® Packs) at Walmart. Starbucks® also rolled out Peppermint Mocha Flavored Ground Coffee and Caffè Latte K-Cup® Packs!
Coffee + Healthy Dessert = HEAVEN!
You can’t go wrong with something a little lighter for the holiday season 🙂
Healthy Mocha Cake with Mocha Frosting
Ingredients
Cake:
- 3 tbs Starbucks® Holiday Blend Ground Coffee
- 1¼ cups Boiling Water
- 430g (1¾ cups) Unsweetened Applesauce
- ⅓ cup Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
- 4 Large Eggs
- 2 Large Egg Whites
- 1 tbs Vanilla Extract
- 1 tbs Liquid Stevia Extract
- 224g (2 cups) Coconut Flour
- 144g (¾ cup) Granulated Erythritol
- 80g (1 cup) Unsweetened Dutch Processed Cocoa Powder
- 1 tbs Double-Acting Baking Powder
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
Frosting:
- 6 oz Neufchâtel Cream Cheese (room temperature)
- 4 oz Plain, Nonfat Greek Yogurt
- ¾ tsp Vanilla Extract
- 35g (¼ cup) Powdered Erythritol
- 1 tbs Unsweetened Dutch Processed Cocoa Powder
- ⅛ tsp Espresso Powder
- 2 oz No Sugar Added Dark Chocolate (melted)
Instructions
For the Frosting: (**make the frosting first!)
- In an electric stand mixer bowl fitted with a whisk attachment, add the cream cheese, yogurt, and vanilla extract. Turn the stand mixer on medium speed and beat until completely smooth.
- Turn off the mixer and add the erythritol, cocoa powder, and espresso powder. Beat until completely smooth.
- Turn the mixer on low speed and slowly add the melted chocolate. Mix until completely smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix one last time. Cover and refrigerate while you make the cake.
For the Cake:
- In a french press, add the Starbucks® Holiday Blend Ground Coffee and boiling water. Let brew for ~6-8 minutes, then press. Measure 1 cup of the coffee and set aside to cool.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray 2 8” cake pans with cooking spray and line with 8” circle parchment paper liners.
- In an electric stand mixer bowl fitted with a beater attachment, add the applesauce, almond milk, eggs, egg whites, vanilla extract and stevia extract. Mix on low speed. Add in the cooled brewed coffee. Keep the mixer running while you prepare the dry ingredients.
- In a medium-sized bowl, sift together the coconut flour, erythritol, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt.
- Turn off the mixer and dump in the dry ingredients. Increase the mixer speed to medium and mix until all the ingredients are fully incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix one last time.
- The batter will be very thick, so scoop it into the pans and spread it out evenly with an offset spatula. Bake for 50 minutes, or until the surface springs back when tapped. Let cool completely in the pan.
- Flip one cake layer onto a cake pedestal, peel off the parchment paper cake liner, and scoop on some of the frosting. Flip the other cake layer onto a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet, peel off the parchment paper cake liner, then carefully slide it onto the frosted bottom cake layer (this is a delicate cake, so be careful!). Frost the remainder of the cake.
- Refrigerate uncovered for 1 hour, then slice and serve, or store in the fridge covered with a cake dome for up to 5 days.
Recipe Notes
I totally ate way more than my “cake quota” this week, thanks to this cake. But it’s totally healthy so I don’t feel bad in the slightest. Nope, not one bit.
Word to the wise: this Healthy Mocha Cake makes for the BEST breakfast 😉
Enjoy!
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With love and good eats,
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– Jess
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Indulge − no strings attached!
From the looks of this cake, it is so hard to believe it is healthy! I must make this for my husband and I stat! #client
It is amazing and I hope you both love it! Happy baking 🙂
-Jess
Is the “430g (1¾ cups) Unsweetened Applesauce” as a replacement for oil?
I’d like to lower the sugar content even more…Do you think I could replace the apple sauce with oil? yogurt? If yes, would it be 1:1? This looks really good so I hope I can improvise 😉
The applesauce not only adds natural sweetness, but it adds moisture without the heavy and greasy texture you’d get from oil. To be honest, 1¾ cups of applesauce only has 42g of naturally occurring sugars, which split up over 12 slices, leaves just 3.5g of sugar per slice. Not a lot. Though, if you DID want to reduce that, I suppose you can swap in some oil for the applesauce, but definitely not the entire amount. I’d say the max you can swap would be the following measurements:
– 246g (1 cup) Unsweetened Applesauce
– 168g (¾ cup) Neutral Oil (like grapeseed oil or avocado oil)
Sounds great, where does the coffee go? The espresso powder goes in the frosting but where does the coffee go? I made this and added the coffee and it turned out aweful! So disappointing and costly to follow a recipe (in part) and it be no where near what it’s supposed to be.
Oops, meant to say to add the coffee along with the wet ingredients in the cake. Next time, make sure to reach out before you make the recipe if you don’t see an important step… it’s an easy mistake but also an easy fix.
What happened to the cake? Everybody who tried this liked it so I’m wondering if you made any ingredient substitutions or omitted something?
Thank you so much for this site. I have been experimenting with stevia and erythritol in recipes for a year now. It’s an obsession! I want low glycemic desserts with low sugar content. At the same time trying to achieve great texture and flavour. Seems like you have achieved that in your recipes! They look absolutely delicious!
What an amazing accomplishment..he must feel so relieved and you must be so proud! This cake is awesome! I can see it becoming a staple in my house, especially with the yummy dressing! Made this tonight, basically immediately after reading this post. Sooo good!
As someone who is bound and determined to reverse my mild diabetes, I am on a severe low carb sugar free diet. I have a very strong sweet tooth and always crave dessert
I am tired of eating my sugar free jello pudding while dreaming of more fulfilling desserts so I was excited to find this site.
However, after reading the nutrition facts of this dessert I am disappointed. 22 grams of carbohydrates is a lot and 6 grams of sugar is not sugar free Also 280 grams of sodium is alarming as well.
I will look at some of the other recipes and hope for lower numbers.
22g of carbs is not a high carb count, especially for cake. And if you look at the ingredients, they’re all low carb ingredients.
When you talk about the sugar count being 6g, it’s NATURAL sugars, not sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. You’ll also notice vegetables have sugar, like broccoli. This is naturally occurring sugar. Not added sugar.
Also, sodium can be reduced if you really need it to be lower. Simply use less salt.
Followed the recipe very closely and it turned out terrible.
Did you use a kitchen scale to measure out your ingredients? Thats crucial.
And did you substitute or omit any ingredients?
Hi Jessica! i am fixing to make your cake and I’d like to ask, what the round things on top of the cake are? I want mine to look like your picture. Thank you for the recipe and thank you for developing it. Dezi
The round things are chocolate covered espresso beans! Just for photography purposes… I actually hate the way they taste lol