Chickpea Chocolate Cake

Who would have thought that the humble chickpea would make a great chocolate cakes? I certainly didn't. It most definitely isn't a usual ingredient that one would find in cakes! I was a bit of a skeptic when I first saw the recipe. I'm not exactly a fan of chickpeas but nevertheless decided to give it a go and I've been a convert ever since. And the best thing about it is that my kids absolutely LOVE it! Who would have thought that they would love chickpeas. It's such a novel way of getting some protein into my kids' diet.

This was the cake we had for our Easter tea.

The inside of the cake was nice and moist!

The kids enjoyed the cake so much that I decided to make another one for J's 2nd Birthday. Only this time I used vegan dark and white chocolate (by Organica) for the ganache so that it was totally diary free. It turned out really nice too!

J's birthday cake decorated with his favourite fruits

The Recipe

I got my inspiration from these websites: all recipes and chickpea recipes and adapted them to be more sugar and dairy free. 

Ingredients

460g chickpeas (drained weight)

4 eggs

1 tbsp vegetable oil

75g stevia blend (pure stevia extract blended with erythritol)

2 tbsp maple syrup

2g baking powder

20g ground almonds

20g cacao nibs

1 tsp almond extract

60g dark chocolate (G&B's 72% dark cooking chocolate)

120g milk chocolate (G&B's 37% milk cooking chocolate)

Ganache

250ml Coconut Cream (can also use Oat cream)

200g chocolate (30g milk chocolate, 110g dark chocolate, 60g cacao butter)

1 tsp almond extract (optional)

15g stevia (optional)

2 tbsp maple syrup (optional)

Method

1. Heat oven to 170C. Lightly grease cake tin with oil.
2. Blend chickpeas, eggs and oil until smooth. If the blender is big enough add the rest of the dry ingredients and blend. Otherwise pour the chickpea mixture into a mixing bowl and mix the rest of the dry ingredient. Melt the chocolate and add to mixture. Mix well.
3. Pour the cake mixture into the tin and bake for about 40 mins or until skewer comes out clean. Cool cake before taking it out of tin.
4. Prepare Ganache: Put the chocolate, almond extract, stevia and maple syrup into a bowl. Heat the cream and pour the hot mixture over the chocolate. Mix until it is smooth. Cool the mixture until it quite thick (thin enough to pour but thick enough not to be free flowing). Pour it over the cake mixture.

N.B

Maple syrup is optional. I only use it because it helps to mask the 'medicinal' taste of stevia which while not unpleasant just tastes weird if you're not used to it.

For the ganache it is not necessary to use a mixture of chocolate. I only use a mixture as I didn't have enough dark chocolate. And can leave out the stevia and maple syrup too.