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This healthy vanilla cake made with Greek yogurt’s going to become your new family classic. It’s full of flavor, it’s light and it’s versatile: Breakfast, lunch, snacks, there’s never not a good time to grab yourself a slice of this lovely loaf!

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Healthy Vanilla Cake

We love a loaf cake in this house. We also love vanilla, and so this healthy vanilla cake is perfect for us. If you or your kids are new to Clean eating vanilla is a really good flavor to use when you start baking from scratch because it’s used in so many processed foods and it’s a flavor the kids will be familiar with.

I haven’t added a frosting to this vanilla cake this time but you absolutely can and I often do (see the recipe below). If you fancied you could also turn this into a layer cake and add the butter cream in the middle so you have a sandwich cake: maybe something better kept for special occasions, a birthday cake maybe.

However you choose to eat this vanilla cake, you’ll find it’s a lovely kid friendly oven baked healthier version of a traditional vanilla cake. Yum :)

I’ve made vanilla cupcakes recently and they reminded me of this loaf cake, the muffins have a cream topping and so while they’re reserved for a slightly more occasional treats, this loaf cake is more of a staple. I bake this in an 8-inch pan and it makes about 10 ish slices, depending on the thickness of your cut.

Vanilla Buttercream

Feel free to add a vanilla butter cream. I call it a buttercream but in fact this is a cream cheese frosting. It’s easier to thicken cream cheese with maple syrup and vanilla bean paste. Regular buttercream uses confectionery sugar to thicken and sweeten the butter, and so since we’re not using confectionery sugar, cream cheese is easier to use. And I think, tastier!

1 Cup Cream cheese – Full fat. Check the labels to make sure it’s Clean
2 tsp Vanilla paste
2 tbsp Maple syrup
1-2 tsp Arrowroot powder. Add this one tsp at a time depending on the consistency you’re looking for

Serve This For Breakfast

Can you eat cake for breakfast? Should you eat cake for breakfast? I rationalise this by remembering the boxed supermarket cereals my kids used to eat. Are eggs better? I think so yes, but these are kids and while we strive for an 80% Clean eating thing going on most of the time, I do allow some sugars with breakfast so is this good to eat for breakfast? On all counts…Yes!

If you decide to go for it and serve this for breakfast I’d recommend toasting it (low heat, the sugar will make this burn fast) and serving it hot with some fruit on top and maybe a small drizzle of maple syrup. Alternatively have a slice of this alone if times short and you need breakfast on the go!

Pack It Up For A Kid’s Lunchbox

This cake is filling and so it’s great to give the kids for their morning snack at school. I often pack up a slice and add it to lunchboxes for a nice little keep you going snack!

Ingredients

Flour

I mostly use all purpose flour in my baking dry ingredients because it’s pretty hard to find the self rising versions of the flour I use. The self raising versions of any flour is simply that the baking powder has already been added and so you don’t have to think about quantities and you can just leave the rising agent out of the recipe.

However, it’s easy to add your own to any kind of flour and so I’ve added the baking powder amounts into the recipe.

Maple Syrup

Maple syrup along with coconut sugar is my go to sweetener for baking. Make sure to use 100% pure maple syrup and not the flavored syrups that seem to be everywhere in the shops. It’s a but more expensive than the ‘not pure’ versions and can sometimes be a lot more, but it’s far better and you can taste the difference. Besides, the flavored syrups are filled with refined sugars and that’s not where we’re at!

Vanilla Bean Paste

My love of this stuff knows no bounds :) Vanilla bean paste is the upper class relative of vanilla extract, think of it like an in-between of vanilla pods and vanilla extract. It has a far more natural taste than an extract but is far less expensive and easier to use in baking than vanilla pods.

Salt

This cake is low in sodium but I do use salted butter as it brings out the vanilla flavor. If you can’t get butter that’s salted already you can add in a quarter teaspoon of ground salt

Additions

Fresh berries – Add some fresh berries to this for added goodness and a bit more texture. The berries need to be fresh and not frozen as the frozen variety have too much water in them to use for this cake. Try raspberries, cherries or blackberries
Coconut oil – You can replace the butter for oil with the same weight. This adds a bit more flavor and moisture
Dairy free – If you want to make this cake dairy free you can replace the butter with the coconut oil above or even olive oil
Chocolate cake – Adding a heaped tablespoon of cocoa will give you a chocolate and vanilla version of this cake. Use a high quality cocoa what doesn’t contain anything you don’t recognise on the ingredients label

Baking Tips

Make sure your pan is greased or lined with parchment paper! Not doing so will give you a delicious cake that you have to scrape off the sides of the loaf pan!
Adjust the vanilla flavor to suit your tastes. Vanilla bean paste has a string flavor that we love – if you’re not sure, add a little less the first time you make this
Don’t open the oven door before the first 25 minutes of cooking time as this will cause your cake to stop rising or worse, cause a risen cake to deflate!
Feel free to use round cake pans to bake this in for a round cake. I just like the slice and eat thing you get with a loaf!
You only need to whisk the eggs lightly

Storing

This cake stores much the same as other, in an airtight container, for round about three days. There’s no reason not to eat this cake past that point other than it will have started to become a bit dry. This is where it’s perfect for breakfast, pop it into the toaster on a very low heat and you’ll give it a new lease of life!

You can also freeze this. Slice it up before freezing it then you can take individual slice out as and when you need them. To defrost this, leave it on a plate on the kitchen top and within a few hours it’ll be god to eat.

Don’t put frozen slices into the toaster though, there’s too much water.

You can leave this in the freezer for up top a month.

More Clean Eating Cakes

How To Make Healthy Vanilla Cake

Ingredients

1 Cup Flour Buckwheat, Einkorn or white spelt
¼ + 3tbsp Cup Butter Salted or add a quarter teaspoon of salt if your butter’s not salted already
¼ Cup Maple syrup 100% Pure
2 Eggs Lightly whisked
2 tsp Vanilla bean paste Or vanilla extract
1 tsp Baking powder Or baking soda

Instructions

Heat up your oven to 190° or the equivalent and line a regular loaf tin with parchment paper or foil. If you’re using foil, grease the foil to stop the cake sticking
In a large mixing bowl and using electric beaters, beat the butter and maple syrup together until the batter is light and fluffy
Add your beaten eggs and vanilla bean paste to the mix and beat again for just a few seconds
With a wooden spoon combine the baking powder and flour and mix until just combine
Bake your cake for 25 minutes until the cake looks golden brown. Insert a sharp knife into the centre of the cake to make sure it’s cooked and then let it cool down full on a wire rack before slicing and serving