Chocolate Chickpea Cake: Get some Extra Fiber

Once you spend enough time in the kitchen, you discover that some things almost always pair quite well together. Cinnamon and ginger. Tomatoes and cheese. Chocolate and chickpeas.

Wait what? Chocolate and chickpeas? How do those combine into anything edible?

Evidently, they can be combined to make a dense, deep chocolate cake.

I’d seen a few recipes for chickpea chocolate cake, and added it to my “someday” baking list. Then, I noticed that this week’s recipe linkup at Healthy Living Blogs, which I actually belong to (honestly), was for recipes featuring beans.

Well then. Time to make some cake. Chickpea cake. With chocolate.

Chocolate Chickpea Cake Ingredients (as adapted from Serious Eats)

4 ounces chopped bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled to room temperature (Scharffen Berger 70% Cocoa Bittersweet)

1 (15-ounce) chickpeas, rinsed and drained with sinks removed

¾ c egg replacement (such as EggBeaters)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons sucralose (Splenda)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Line a 4”x8” loaf pan with parchment paper and spray with nonstick cooking spray. Puree beans, egg replacement, and vanilla in a food processor until smooth.

Doesn’t that, uh, not look like cake batter? It’s ok. Proceed by adding the sugar, baking powder and salt, blend until smooth. Then add the chocolate and blend until well-combined, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl several times to ensure that a uniform mixture is achieved. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.

Now this is starting to look kind of like a normal cake. Bake at 350°F for 40-45 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, remove from pan by lifting edges of parchment paper, then slice.

Since this cake is made from nontraditional ingredients, it should be no surprise that it doesn’t taste like a traditional cake. That being said, it is dense and moist, and offers a deep chocolate flavor without being very sweet.

And if you slice this into 10 pieces, each piece has only 120 calories and 4.5 grams of fat. To boot, it also packs 2.5 grams of fiber.

A perfect recipe for healthy living with chocolate, no?

Have you ever made a bean-based cake? How did it turn out?