Cakes and chocolate frosting are two things I miss dearly since switching to my low-fat, low-salt, low-added-sugar diet. As a parent of grown children, I sometimes wonder if my offspring realize just how difficult the eating change in my life has been for me. As adults themselves, they have their own lives to live, of course, and looking back I wonder how aware I was of my father’s health problems.
So that said, it was a wonderful surprise to receive a Christmas present from my daughter that shows she is aware of what I’m going through. She sent me a low-fat cake mix along with some sugar-free low-fat frosting mix.
You can see in the photo that the frosting advertises itself as low-fat, using Sweet ‘n Low instead of sugar. The cake mix has only 2.5g of fat per serving (it says a fifth of the package, a fourth would be a more realistic serving). 
The frosting box talks about 16 servings of frosting in one box. That seems wildly exaggerated to me, as you can determine yourself when looking at the finished product. I’d say it’s more like four servings as well, so multiple those numbers by four and the fat count jumps to 8 grams while the cake fat content is about 3-4 grams.
The mix made a layer of cake that filled an eight-inch square pan as you can see here. The taste wasn’t quite like a real cake. I could taste the presence of the artificial sweetener (Sweet ‘n Low contains saccharin). Without more fat, the cake tasted a bit gritty as well.
But I loved the gift for the caring it showed from a loved one. A box of mix sells for $4.38 on the Heart Healthy Market. Frosting also costs $4.38 a box, so a cake that makes four pieces will cost you $8.76 before shipping. I’m not sure it’s worth that, other than as a gift.
John
The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal 