May 9, 2002
Contact: Mark Anderson (509-963-1493/fax 509-963-2301/e-mail andemark@cwu.edu)
ELLENSBURG, Wash. - The days of eating chocolate cake and worrying about your weight just may be over. Central Washington University students Erika Van Calcar and Jenny Mitchell have found that the vegetable oil used in one of America’s favorite cakes can adequately be replaced with almond butter.
Calcar and Mitchell learned that almond butter, similar to peanut butter, cuts the amount of fat in a chocolate cake in half. Their research was designed to find the affects and acceptability of chocolate cake with half the oil as a typical recipe and with almond butter as a substitute for oil.
They baked three cakes: one using a standard cake mix with the recommended amount of canola oil, another with the cake mix but half the recommended oil and a final cake with almond butter as the substitute for the oil.
“Our analysis of the cakes found that the cake with almond butter had the same reduced fat content as the cake with half of the canola oil,” explained Dr. David Gee, advisor and professor in the department of family and consumer studies. “The bigger question was how did the cake look, feel, and taste?”
The researchers accumulated 25 CWU student judges to evaluate the cakes---“tough job,” Gee notes. The judges evaluated sweetness, moistness, chewiness, and preference. They found that there was no significant difference between the standard cake and the cake with less fat. They did note the almond-butter cake had a few differences from the other two cakes.
“It was a little bit drier and chewier, but the judges ate it right up,” Gee reports. “And they would eat it again. On the other hand, if reducing calories and fat are your main interests, cutting back on the oil by half will probably make a slightly better cake.”
