If you think you have to give up cakes on special occasions if you're eating healthy, think again. Pillsbury has a reduced sugar cake mix with 50% less sugar than standard cake mixes - and it tastes delicious!

I normally try to encourage people to stay away from desserts and treats. You should eat healthy food until you're full - not avoid eating your veggies because you're saving room for junk food! But there are definitely times that cake is a normal part of the day. Birthday parties, graduation parties, going away parties always seem to have cake at them. You'd be hard pressed to convince people to all gather around and share broccoli to celebrate.

Usually the problem is that a low sugar or low carb cake mix obviously tastes like it. You don't want to be handing out pieces of cake at a family gathering, and have people turn up their noses at the awful food! I've tried quite a number of mixes that fall into this category.

I think companies are finally getting the hang of how to have Splenda used in baking goods. You can't just completely replace sugar with Splenda in most baking situations - the sugar is necessary for some of the reactions. Still, you don't need *all* the sugar - just enough to get the reactions to work, and then provide the rest of the sweet flavor with Splenda.

Pillbury really has gotten the balance quite nice with this reduced sugar cake mix. We served this at a going away party recently, to a group of "normal people" (i.e. not dieters). They all loved it! They never would have guessed the cake was low sugar, if we hadn't told them afterwards. It was moist and rich tasting. The flavors were great. The texture was great.

Remember, it's not that you can eat this every day. There are still 28g of carbs per serving. That's 160 calories. Cake really doesn't have any nutritional value :) You're filling your stomach with something that is not helping you any - and is adding potential fat into your system.

But if you're having a party, and want to serve something that the whole family will love *and* will be more healthy than other options, I highly recommend this. Really, there's no reason at all to have a regular cake mix with double the sugar.


Lisa Shea's Library of Low Carb Books