Vanilla Snack Cakes

Despite some tall tales, Hostess Twinkies do not last forever. The box of Twinkies that my friends gave me as a gag gift were, in fact, hard as a rock in less than a year. These cream-filled chiffon cake snacks, made with real, unprocessed dairy and eggs and whole-grain flours, won’t last nearly as long as preservative-laden Twinkies, but you will almost certainly gobble them up in no time at all.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup (90 grams) white spelt or all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup (30 grams) ground millet or cake flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 egg whites
• 1/3 cup (66 grams) cane sugar
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1/4 cup (2 ounces) water
• 2 tablespoons safflower oil
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 batch (about 1 cup) Snack Cake Crème

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F and lightly grease a canoe-style snack cake pan. If you don’t have a snack cake pan, you can use 4-ounce loaf pans. Alternatively, create your own molds out of foil by shaping double thicknesses of aluminum foil around a spice bottle and setting the individual foil pieces next to each other in a cake pan.
2. Sift the spelt flour, ground millet flour, baking powder, and salt together and set aside.
3. In a dry mixer bowl with dry beaters, beat the egg whites until stiff, about 2 minutes. Transfer the beaten egg whites to a clean bowl and set aside.
4. In the same mixer bowl, add the sugar, honey, water, oil, egg yolks, and vanilla and beat for 1 minute. Add the flour mixture and beat until smooth, about 2 minutes. Fold in half of the beaten egg whites; once the first half is fully incorporated, fold in the second half.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared molds, filling them 2/3 of the way full. Bake until golden, 15 to 20 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking. Cool the cakes in the pan for at least 20 minutes, then remove to a wire rack and cool completely before filling with the Snack Cake Crème.
6. To fill the cakes, use a skewer or chopstick to poke 2 holes partially through the snack cake from the bottom, and wiggle around to hollow out some space. Use a piping bag fitted with a Bismarck (#230) tip or a very small star-shaped tip to fill the cake with the Snack Cake Crème.
7. To make raspberry snack cakes, make the snack cakes as directed. Coat each filled snack cake with raspberry jam and dust with shredded coconut. They will be sticky and delicious.
8. Or for Chocolate-Coated Snack Cakes, try dipping your snack cakes in melted chocolate.

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