How to Bake A Diabetic German Chocolate Cake

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Even though someone has diabetes, few reasons exist not to indulge in a German chocolate cake occasionally. This tender cake uses squares of baking chocolate or unsweetened cocoa, cake flour, butter, eggs and sugar to make. The frosting uses evaporated milk, pecans, coconut, egg yolks, sugar and vanilla. Bakers can use substitutions for the sugar and fat in the cake, dropping the calorie load considerably, which makes it a better dessert for diabetics than the original recipe. Even though you tinker with the ingredients, you can follow the instructions for making the cake based on conventional recipes for German chocolate cake.

Replace the sugar in the cake with sugar substitutes. The choices include sweeteners made from sucrose, stevia, saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium and neotame. Sweeteners are typically located in the baking aisle close to the actual sugars. Choose sweeteners specially formulated for baking instead of the packets; manufacturers use fill in baking sugar substitutes to add bulk to recipes.

Substitute sugar-free applesauce for some of the butter for the cake. Applesauce creates a moist texture in baked goods. Even though butter is not a carbohydrate, it has plenty of calories from fat. The amount of butter in German chocolate cake recipes vary. Bakers have found that they can reduce the fat by 75 percent when using applesauce.

Follow recipe directions for the size, shape and coatings for the pans to use to bake the cake. Turn the oven on to the temperature specified in the recipe.

Time the baking of the cake carefully. Sometimes sugar substitutes do not brown as they bake as much as actual sugar. Once the cake is done, loosen the sides with a knife and turn the round cake layers out on a cooling rack. Let a square or rectangular cake cool in the pan.

Make the frosting in a heavy pan according to the directions the recipe provides. Frost the cake after both the cake and the frosting cool. Use reduced fat evaporated milk and the sugar substitute. Unsweetened coconut also cuts the carbohydrate load. Pecans have a low glycemic index, a measure of how rapidly sugar enters the blood stream. Foods with a high glycemic index value spike blood sugar levels and when the levels fall, people sense that they are hungry again.

Refrigerate any uneaten portions of the cake after you cover it. While real sugar acts as a preservative, sugar substitutes do not. Even though the egg yolks and whites are baked in the cake and cooked in the frosting, they can spoil at room temperature.