Taste Test Tuesday: Starbucks Gluten-free Valencia Orange Cake

On top of the pedestal in the bakery case at my local Starbucks was this little orange round cake. You might pass it up thinking it's loaded with sugar and white flour...or you might pass it up because you just noticed the name tag on the product boasts "Gluten-Free", a term that may have come to mean "taste-free" in your house based on sampling other gluten-free products.

But...I didn't pass it up and I shared it with a friend and we were both pleasantly surprised with the taste and the texture. This little cake was so good there is no way I'm sharing my next one!

The first five ingredients are:

Whole eggs
Valencia orange pulp
Almonds
Sugar
Orange peel

If you are slightly alarmed by whole eggs being the first ingredient, know that each cake contains 125 mg cholesterol, which is the equivalent of slightly more than half of an egg. The second ingredient, the orange pulp, is contributing a good portion of the impressive 4 grams of fiber that comes with each cake. Yes, it's pretty high in fat, 16 grams, but there are only 2 grams of saturated fat and zero grams of trans fat per cake serving. Where is the 16 grams coming from anyway? If there is a little over half an egg in each cake then that accounts for 3 grams of fat. And with a little detective work I found out that most of the remaining fat grams come from almonds. The Valencia Orange Cake is composed of 24% almonds in the form of sliced almonds sprinkled on top of the cake and almond flour used in the cake batter. That's good news because almonds are a great source of smart fats and phytochemicals.

The cake definitely doesn't taste too sweet and there is actually less sugar added than there are almonds sprinkled on top as garnish, according to the list of ingredients. Here's what each cake contains:

290 calories
16 g fat
2 g saturated fat
0 g trans fat
125 mg cholesterol
32 g carbohydrate
4 g fiber
40 mg sodium

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