Moist, tender cake — it must be loaded with fat, right? How about a cup of fat-free apple butter instead?

Health-conscious bakers have been using applesauce to cut fat for a long time, but the delightful spiciness of apple butter adds even more depth to baked goods.

Apple butter is made by slow-cooking apples, cider, sugar and spices until the mixture caramelizes and turns a deep mahogany color.

Its thick, buttery consistency makes it a good spread for breads, a condiment or an ingredient in baking. Look for it with the jellies and jams in most markets.

Most fruit butters and purees work well for reducing fat in baking because they contain plenty of pectin, which is a natural thickener.

Like fat, pectin helps to keep baked goods tender by coating the proteins in flour and preventing them from forming tough glutens (which are desirable in bread but not in cakes or cookies).

As a rule of thumb, as much as half the fat, be it buter, oil or shortening, can be cut in some recipes by substituting fruit butters and purees. You might need to cut the sugar as well, because the fruit purees are naturally sweet.

This apple butter spicecake contains only a quarter cup of oil. The recipe also calls for fat-free buttermilk, which reacts with the baking soda to form lots of bubbles in the batter. This type of non-yeast leavening also adds to the tenderness of the cake.

The cake is simple to whip together and though it’s good warm, right out of the oven, it also holds very well. Kept covered, the spicecake will stay moist for at least four or five days.

As an alternative to whipped cream, try serving the cake with a dollop of plain yogurt. The creamy tanginess is a perfect foil for the sweet spiciness of the cake.

By JIM ROMANOFF For The Associated Press

Nutrition information per serving: 238 calories; 6 g fat (1 g saturated); 18 mg cholesterol; 44 g carbohydrate; 3 g protein; 2 g fiber; 247 mg sodium.