With Christmas just around the corner, we thought we needed to cover some sweets for a change, and so there is no better timing than to choose some very yummy chocolate cake mixes. Hi, I'm Susie Burrow and I'm Lean Woo, and as two of us Jays leading dieticians, we bring you the Nutrition Couch Product Review, a weekly chat on new products and old favorites that you can find in the supermarket. Now, on today's episode, we're specifically looking at
chocolate cake. Now, Leanne, you've first had a little cheeky birthday?
Were you?
What cake did we have for miss me out? Turning one?
We had a lovely vanilla sponge cake with fresh cream and strawberries, and I did not make it, but it was amazing. It tastes so good. Most of my friends had two slices. They were like raving about it, and I was like, oh, wish I could take the credit, but sadly I can't.
Well, you're a busy working mum running the Nutrition Couch, who's got time to do that kind of baking land, So you're allowed to be off the hook. Now, I will be fully transparent that I never buy a cake mix because I will make from scratch. I am a bit of a baker, but I just am not a cake mix person. But I'm really loving these range. It's really interesting. Amy has helped us with this review, so thanks Amy, You've helped us amazingly this year and just
graduated from Dietetech. So well done, and she sounds a really interesting one. So the first one we're going to have a look at, Leanne is the Greens forty percent less sugar chocolate cake mix, which I've never seen before and it retails for four dollars fifty at Woolli's and Coals. And what we're going to do is compare a cheeky thing cake people cake companies do is they put really tiny serving sizes, so there's a reference. A very small,
slender slice of cake could be about one hundred grams. Now, this one recommended serves a sixty two gram so it's literally nothing.
It's like twelve serves per cake. Who cuts the cake into twelve serves?
No way, exactly. That's a very slim, slimver. So we are going to compare across one hundred grams to make it a little more realistic. And even that's a fairly small slice. So one hundred grams of cake is giving a six sixteen one hundred and sixty kilo dules or three hundred and ninety seven calories four hundred calories, so literally a meal in a size of cake six point four grams of protein, nineteen point two grams of that.
Now that should we should say that's also as prepared, So it's going to include i'd say some eggs and butter, which we'll look at in a second, eleven point six of which is saturated and carbo hydrate forty seven point eight grams is a reference A slice of breads roughly fifteen, so you're looking at about three slices of bread in
that that size of cake. And nineteen point nine grams of sugar, so almost five tea spoons in our reduced sugar cake mix, which is not insignificant, and six hundred and fifty one milligrams of sodium, which is also not insignificant for a piece of cake. And I say, if we look at the cake mix, and this is an ic cake, so that's also adding some some serious sugar.
The cake mix itself is wheat flour, sugar, cocoa powder at nine percent smultedextron sorce of sugar, vegetable fat, some mulsified antioxidants, raising agents, salt, natural fire, is thickener, rice starts and multipliers, vegetable gum, and then the icing multiext from wheat, starch, sugar, so three forms of sugar, Cocoa powder at ten percent, non fat, milk solids, tapioca, starch,
and salt. Now, the first thing I would say is if you're getting twenty grams of sugars from a forty percent reduce, that means you're clocking in at thirty to forty grams of sugar per slice of cake, which is massive. Am I reckon that most cake recipes and mixes overdo the sugar by at least a third. You can always cut it right back, and I think Annabel Krab, the media commentator, has mentioned that before in her baking. I never add salt to a cake mix ever.
Yeah, six hundred milligrams per serves massive.
That's a lot. That's like a quarter of your daily intake in your chocolate cake of one hundred grams, which is nothing. Aligin wheat, gluten, milk and soy maybe present egg made in Australia from seventy percent austrained ingredients. You have to also add two eggs, two thirds of a cup of milk, and sixty grams of margarine. Shocking at least do butter. Would I buy no is chocolate cake
very high in sugar? Yes, and I'd probably say you try and make your own some healthier ingredients like a low fat milk, some plain butter, or even olive oil, maybe grate some beet treat in there, which makes a great chocolate cake, and ditch that salt, and you can probably use a sugar replacement and get a much better nutritionals for a cake that still tastes pretty good. What do you reckon?
Lyanna?
You ripping that up when MEA goes to school?
Probably not definitely not mindus, and I have I must an't better. I have occasionally bought a box cake mix or a box cookie mix or something if I'm very, very time poor and I'm cooking for something else, or someone's told me to bring a cake somewhere and I just think, oh God, I don't have time, or just you know, like this just because I'm not a baker, so I don't have my cocoa powder and my baking flour, my sugar and stuff in my pantry, Like I don't add your good to make tea and coffee. I don't
have that sort of stuff in my pantry. I may do when I get into my new house, but at the moment we're pretty space poor, so I don't have a lot of that stuff. So if someone said to me, Heyley, and can you bring a chocolate cake for afternoon tea? Or can you bring some biscuits for the kids for afternoon tea, I would probably, for time poor sake, just buy a box. But this would definitely not be the
one I'm choosing. It is pretty shocking the amount of sodium in there, and this is a forty percent less sugar cake, as you said, At twenty grams per hundred grams, it's quite a lot. So yeah, if this was me, even if I was a wirebox mix, what I would do is I would use two thousands of a cup of skim milk. Take calories down a little bit. I would use sixty grams of extraversion olive oil. Often when I bake, I actually interchangeably sub the butter or the
marge for extraversion olive oil. And then if I was making from scratch like you, I would one hundred percent. I always have, if not a little bit less the sugar amount as like you, I feel like the sugar amount is way too high and it doesn't really influence the texture or the taste to me personally at all. So I think there's definitely a few healthier things you can do yourself, but this definitely wouldn't be one that
I'm recommending. I still think for the nutritionals, even though it's better than some of the other boxes, it's still just not quite there for me. True.
Okay, let's have a look at the next one. Naturally good gluten free chocolate mudcake. Oh I love mudcake. If you're gonna have chocolate cake, you gotta have mud, don't you. I grew up in the time of the Cheesecake Shop. You know they had those mudcakes, like caramel mudcakes. They do do a good mudcake, all right, four hundred and fifty grams six dollars, call them blies. I think this is in the health food section. I've seen this brand there.
They're serving size is ninety grams, so pretty close to one hundred. But we will go back to the one hundred grams very similar. At eighteen is that sixteen commas sixteen sixty sixteen sixty kilodels, so again about four hundred calories three point nine grams of protein. So I'm just saying, oh, yeah, this is cake prepared again, eighteen point one grams are fat,
only two point one grams saturated. That's nice. I have to look at that fifty five point six grams of carbs, almost four slices of bread, and thirty six grams point two of sugars, which is what eighteen spoons slice, and two hundred and twelve milligrams of sodium, so a lot less the third of what's in the others. So what's
in this cheeky mix? Sugar is the first ingredient, Oh my goodness, followed by tapioca flour, cocoa powder at nine point seven, potato starch, trice far modified tapiocre starch, raising agents i'd i salt, zample and gum, natural chocolate, favor, cilium, husk okay leanne's gonna put her my allergies, thinking cap on, why is it said? Oh, so they're doing only water to mix oil and eggs, so no butter or marge.
I think they're assuming it's vegetable oil, which is why they saturated fat's very low, so you'd add like a vegetable locker to mix it. Yeah, so saturated fat's very low, but the total fat's relatively high.
So it's a cake with oil and just sugar and a bit of tapiocre refined starch.
So really why we went with this one. It is an allergy friendly cake, so it's gluten free. It's celiac, so it's safe for all of our celiacs. It's nut free, it's wheat free, it's it's free from everything basically beside sugar. And suddenly enough it's a mud cake because when you take out the wheat from something like a cake, it takes out that aeration and the light sponginess of a cake. So any you know people who have to have gluten freel or are cilia, they would understand that most gluten
free cakes are dense. Therefore, a mudcake is a really good option to have if you need something that is gluten free, because the wheat actually adds the airiness and the lightness. You couldn't ever make a gluten free airy light sponge cake like you could if you were using you know, normal wheat flour, So I don't mind this. I just wish that sugar wasn't the first ingredient. And it does look to have a little bit of added fiber in there because there is a little bit of
cilium husk. Granted it's a last ingredient, but they haven't reported it on the label, so it can't be too high. I just really like it because you know, Australia is the allergy capital of the world. My little girl's got six allergies herself. She's got sesmi peanut and four tree nuts. So I'm very conscious of my nutrition labels and that sort of thing. So I think to have a really nice, safe product out there for those that need it is a good one. I don't mind the ingredients in there.
I just think it is overly high in sugar. But it is a cake, let's be honest. It's not like we're you know, we're not chomping down on celery here. So as long as you're aware of that and this is an occasional thing and you keep your portion size small, I really don't see a problem with it. I think it's a great option for a lot of our allergy families that need it, of course is better to make it yourself. But again, those ingredients singly are very expensive. Tapioca, flower,
potato starch, riceler, modified tabiyoga starch. You have to buy big bags of them. You can't just buy like a couple of tablespoons of that to make yourself at home. So where you need something like an allergy friendly cake, I would suggest getting it in a box mix if you're not a regular baker, because to buy all of those ingredients separately would actually be pretty expensive. That's sort of my take on it. What do you think?
Yeah, No, I think it's a good you know, one for allergy people because the thing with gluten free cakes that you often find in cafes and you know, the coffee shop, it's often almond meal and that tastes amazing, but it's not suiting for those who need nut free. So I guess this is that middle ground for that group of people who really struggle with options, and it's like anything, you know what I mean, Occasionally it's no big deal, you know, particularly for sal like it's so
difficult all the time. So it sits in that very special category and it's just good for people to be aware that brand is out there. It's in Coles and Woolies actually, so that's good to know. And I think they've got quite a few different ones, so I'll pay a bit more attention actually too. And if we can pull that sugar down a bit, we'd be happy. That leads into our third product, which is really interesting because I actually have not made this and I wouldn't mind
giving it a go. So this is the La Canto chocolate cake mix with the Monk Fruit sweet.
Now.
Now I like these sugar replacements. There's Whole Earth and La Canto, and I use both at times because usually if I'm baking, i'll do half regular sugar for a bit of sort of texture, and i'll do half a replacement and they bake really well. So I'll be interested to know the actual cake mix itself. So this is
five point fifty for three hundred grams. The surfing size listed is sixty three, which is miniskill, so one hundred grams will confer is eight nine twenty five kilodes so just over what two twenty calories two thirty calories per serve, so almost half the comparable cakes. Eight point one grams of protein so quite high. Seven point seven grams are fat and only three point nine saturated. It's pretty low,
almost a low saturated fat products. Almost twenty seven point one grams are carbohydrogen, only one point nine grams of sugar, so that's fundamentally different formulation. Three point five grams are fiber, not insignificant, and a decent two seventy one milligram sodiums are not too bad. First ingredient is strain wheat flour, which is nice to see it's not sugar, followed by lecanto monk fruit, then golden sweetener a se erythrotole. From that.
Coco powder at seven percent are not low, it's quite a good amount. Obviously. The higher the coca well, not obviously, but the higher the cocoa powder that you'd say is generally reflective of the quality I guess of the food cornstarch inulin, which is the fiber where that's coming from, and it's got chickory roots, so you might mention that in terms of people who are sensitive to that. Along with baking powder does contain gluten made from at least
fifty six percent of os the ingredients. There is no icing included, which is interestingly, and you'll just need some milk, three eggs and forty grams of butter. So again those amounts, it's sort of got an extra egg in there and less butter than you'd normally make with a cake that you might put one hundred grams of butter in. So I think that's a bit cheeky because it doesn't have icing. So is it really a chocolate cake without icing? It's like, what is it there? And it's a muffin? Is it
a cake? Icing?
Yeah? And I think it's cheeky because you can't really compare like to like, like, we can't really say that one hundred grams is equivalent to one hundred grams when the other one does have, you know, it significantly more sugar. But it's also you know, icing is basically mostly sugar. Let's be honest, as icing sugar, it's mostly sugar. So I would like to see a comparison with this one did have icing sugar on it or a nice icing on it, and really see But I do definitely think
it's probably the standout for us today. It's significantly less sugar. It's great ingredients, Like the ingredients are pretty clean, wheat, flour, mong fruits, sweetener, cocoa powder, corn such an inuland you can't really go wrong there, can you. And I do just kind of like that. It's a little bit higher in protein because of the wheat flour and the three eggs, and it's a lot less spotial, like forty grams are butter for a cake mix is actually quite a lower
amount as well, so there are definitely some positives in there. Yeah, I'm not confident with that amount. Three eggs will give you a good mix through, but forty grams is small. I couldn't get a cake good under sort of eighty, you know what I mean as a baker myself. Like, you have to try this one out, Susie and report back.
Yeah, I have to try it out. It's quite a small amount, like even fifty back forty that's a bit cheeky to bring the numbers down because I'm thinking dense wise, you know what I mean.
Like it doesn't look as light and airy and fluffy on the front of package photo, does it.
Yeah, So I'm a bit little bit, sus But certainly if it does taste good, and we'll do the taste taste in the holidays, it's a it's a pretty good choice. And as I said, I'm a big fan of those sugar replacements, even though they're reasonably expensive. But that cake mix is actually not too bad. It's comparable to the others, which is good to see. It's like ten dollars compared to five for a regular one, so that's quite good too.
We're done for the year.
Done, We're done. This is our last episode for the year. It is. It brings us to the end of the Nutrition Couch Product Review for another year. If you haven't done so already, please go to our website and have a look at our latest publication which is the Nutrition Couch Product Guide, where you can see firsthand all of the products Lean and I use and recommend for our own families and for our clients, as well as the reasons we like them. And we are going to see
you after a fantastic year. Thank you for listening to us, and we will be right back so you can kick start twenty twenty three on the right foot nutrition ly, So thanks for listening.