Fancy a fudgy, gooey, indulgent chocolate cake but shouldn’t eat too much refined sugar? Try our low sugar Kladdkaka recipe – it really is quite good.
Kladdkaka is essentially a Swedish crossover between a torte and a brownie, especially if you choose to add the ganache/truffle topping. It’s an incredibly rich cake so don’t mistake the thinness of it for not being enough. Trust us, the final product is more than enough.
To make it low sugar, we’ve swapped granulated white sugar for coconut sugar and have used dark chocolate for the ganache topping. While the swaps make this low sugar, it certainly isn’t sugar free – coconut sugar’s glycemic index is half that of white sugar, but it isn’t zero.
To make it dairy free, use a plant-based butter, cream, and chocolate. Removing the dairy won’t impact the outcome of the cake.
Shopping list (with prices)
- Baking butter (Stork, £2)
- Coconut sugar (Coconut Merchant, 1kg, £9.99)
- Cocoa powder (Aldi, £2.99)
- Plain flour (Aldi, 1.5kg, £0.70)
- Vanilla extract (Madagascan Vanilla Extract, £0.79)
- Eggs (6 mixed-weight, £1)
- Sea salt (a full grinder, £1.79)
- Double cream (fresh cream 250ml, £1.39)
- Dark chocolate (two 75% bars, £2.40 each)
There are cheaper places and options to choose when buying each ingredient. A block of salted butter in paper is cheaper than Stork. The chocolate bars are cheaper with a Clubcard, or if you went to a more budget supermarket. The first time we made this cake, we used 55% bars from Co-op – the resulting ganache wasn’t as rich as we wanted, but it still produced a lusciously smooth topping.
The a smaller bag of coconut sugar is obviously going to cost you less, but if you plan on making another other coconut sugar bakes (we’ve got 13 sugar-free baking ideas for you) then the 1kg bag is far better value for money.
Ingredients
For the cake
- 140g salted butter
- 267g coconut sugar
- 94g plain flour
- 25g cocoa powder
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt
For the ganache topping
- 118ml double cream
- 227g dark chocolate
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt for decor
Method
Unlike other cakes, this one is cooked low and slow with the centre still wet when removed from the oven. Your trusty clean-knife test isn’t welcome here. The goal is a fudgy interior – trust in the timings and you’ll be alright.
- Preheat the oven to 160C.
- Line the bottom of an 8-inch tin with parchment paper & grease the sides
- Melt the butter in the microwave (remember to make sure your bowl is microwaveable). Don’t overmelt it – take the bowl out of the microwave while some of the butter is still solid with a little grease across the top & stir it until the final bits melt. This stops it burning
- Whisk the sugar into the melted butter until combined
- Add the eggs one at a time, making sure the first is fully incorporated until cracking in the next
- Sift in the dry ingredients and whisk, lifting up to aerate the mixture. Splash in the vanilla extract and whisk until the batter is smooth
- Pour the batter into the cake tin, making sure to spread it evenly
- Bake for 20-25 minutes – the outside should have a set crust, but the inside sticky. I found that as long as the mix under the crust didn’t slide when tilted, it was done. There’s no need to do the knife test as a clean knife would mean the cake is overbaked
- Leave to cool
For the ganache topping:
- While the cake is cooling, pour 118ml of cream (I round up as who on earth has a measuring jug with such fine increments?) into a saucepan
- Heat moderately, don’t boil it
- When warm, break in half of the chocolate and stir. Once melted, break in the rest and keep stirring. Take it off the heat. Don’t let the chocolate catch on the bottom. The finishing product should be smooth with a nice shine to it
- When the cake is on the cold side of lukewarm, pour the ganache over the top, smoothing it across to make sure you get a flat finish
- Leave the cake to cool at room temperature for a few hours until the ganache sets. You can stick the cake in the fridge around 1 hour/30minutes before serving to get a firmer top
Enjoy! And I know you will.
