First things first, I am not a cook. Or baker. But since I’ve become more serious about running, I’ve really focused on trying to eat better (real) food. Its pretty easy to create healthy meals and snacks like my amazing banana oat cookies, but desserts get pretty tricky– especially for holidays.

In a quest to make a healthier dessert, I found this recipe over at Amy’s Healthy Baking for healthy apple cake. I will caution that a lot of the “healthy” baking options out there only focus on one or two substitutes in the recipe and are often still really high in sugar or fat. I liked this recipe because it used wheat flour and not a lot of butter or sugar. 

I used a high quality springform pan and greased (healthy butter spray..) it according to the recipe. The cake did not fluff up as much as I had expected (probably due to only using 1 egg), but it turned out looking really pretty and made my whole house smell like cinnamon apple! The cake was slightly drier than I would have wanted, and I think it could have used some sliced apple in the cake to increase the apple flavor or even some mashed banana. Other than that, the cake was a hit with my family and we didn’t even miss the pie at Thanksgiving!

Do you have any favorite healthy dessert hacks?