Serves 10
CAKE
- Preheat oven to 180º and line a cake tin.
- Puree
400g red kidney beans or butter beans, drained and rinsed,
1 tablespoon water,
1 egg and
1 teaspoon vanilla extract until smooth on speed 7; then set aside. - Without washing the mixing bowl, beat
125g butter and
140g coconut sugar for 30 seconds on speed 5. - Add
4 eggs and beat for 20 seconds on speed 4. - Add bean mixture back in and combine for 5 seconds on speed 4.
- Add
65g cacao powder,
1 teaspoon gluten-free baking powder,
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda and
1/4 teaspoon celtic sea salt and blend for 10 seconds on speed 4. - Pour batter into cake tin and bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
- Allow the cake to cool, then remove from tin. You can simply decorate it with
raspberries and
desiccated coconut; and/or serve with a generous dollop of
coconut ice cream.
JAM
To take this cake to the next level, you can add some raspberry jam to cut through the dark chocolate taste.
- To make the jam filling, in a small sauce pan heat
1/2 lemon, juiced,
1 tablespoon coconut sugar and
2 teaspoon rice malt syrup. - Once the coconut sugar has dissolved, add
1 cup raspberries,
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract and
2 tablespoon white chia seeds; gently mashing the raspberries with a fork. - Remove from the heat and cool in the fridge until the chia seeds have absorbed most of the liquid to form a jam.
- Slice cooled cake in half and spread the jam between the two layers.
CHOCOLATE ICING
This is the best healthy chocolate icing! I don't have any pictures yet but I will be making this for my daughter's next birthday cake, so I'll share some pictures soon.
- Pour
150g dark chocolate buttons into a stainless steel mixing bowl over a boiling pot of water and slowly stir with a whisk until melted. - Add
1 cup coconut cream and slowly whisk together until combined. - Cool in the fridge until the right consistency to spread onto the cooled cake.
CHOCOLATE SHELL
This is another icing option which creates a thinner and harder layer of chocolate around the cake which I use when I make this cake in my Wilton 5 Layer Cake Tin Set.
- Melt
150g dark chocolate and
3 tablespoons coconut oil in a double boiler, refrigerate for about 20 minutes just before it sets then whisk until fluffy. Pipe or spread over cake - voila!
In this picture I have spread the raspberry jam between the 5 layers and encased the cake in the chocolate shell and topped with freeze dried raspberries.
ITALIAN MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM
For icing that you want to be able to colour, that isn't sickly sweet...
- Prepare your Thermomix bowl with the butterfly whisk attachment and add
4 large egg whites then place in the fridge. You can do this up to a day before to produce a stiff meringue. - If you keep your butter in the fridge, take it out now to bring to room temperature. You will need
300g unsalted butter cut into chunks. - Make sugar syrup by bringing
120g water and
200g caster sugar to the boil on high heat until the sugar is completely dissolved and the syrup is boiling/bubbling at 118ºC. - Whilst the sugar syrup is coming to the boil take the Thermomix bowl out of the fridge and add
1 teaspoon cream of tartar and
2 tablespoons caster sugar. - As soon as the sugar syrup is ready, set Thermomix to 20mins/37ºC/speed 3 and after a few seconds, start very slowly drizzling the sugar syrup in.
- Bring the bowl to room temperature by placing in the fridge for 1/2-1 hour.
- On speed 3, slowly add the chunks of butter until completely smooth. If it is too runny, cool down further in the fridge.
- You can add your colour to the Thermomix bowl or colour smaller batches in separate mixing bowls. Use a spatula to put buttercream in a piping bag and place in the fridge for 10 minutes before piping onto cake.
