This recipe is straight out of the 8 Week Blood Sugar Diet cookbook which has been so successful in helping me lose weight. It was also my first attempt at a style of baking that uses less/no flour and sugar. I wouldn’t call it sophisticated baking, more at the chocolate brownie end of the spectrum (that is no insult to brownies – a well made one is a very welcome thing), but it was very tasty, not too sweet and very simple to make.
The real surprise in this cake is the binding ingredient that replaces flour is red kidney beans. Not something I would have thought of when making a cake, but then carrots in the much adored eponymous cake seem a little counter-intuitive too. I took the remnant to work and no-one guessed that it contained kidney beans.
These are not sugar free or terribly super low calorie. The sweetener is dates which have a high sugar content and glycemic index and 1/12th of an 8″ cake is 250 calories. When you are restricted to 800 calories a day this is a big chunk of your daily allowance and definitely a treat only. However a brownie of this size is at least double this so you are still saving on the calorie front.
The Recipe
This one is easy peasy – none of the multiple elements of some of my recent forays. I used a food processor for the first stage but that still left some remnant of kidney bean skin – not unpleasant, but I think a liquidiser would be better.
The Ingredients
- 400g tin of red kidney beans – drained and rinsed
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
- 5 eggs
- 1 tbsp water
- 150g coconut oil
- 15 soft pitted dates, diced
- 60g cocoa powder
- 1 tsp being powder
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- pinch of salt
- 150g of raspberries
The Method
- Pre heat the oven to 150C fan
- Grease and line a 20cm cake tine
- Put the following ingredients into a liquidiser and blitz to a smooth paste
- kidney beans
- vanilla bean paste
- 3 eggs
- 1 tbsp water
- coconut oil
- Transfer to a bowl and beat in the remaining eggs, and then stir in the dates, cocoa powder, baking powder, cinnamon and salt
- pour into the baking tin
- press in the raspberries
- bake for about 30-40 minutes until a skewer comes out clean
The Cottage Loaf 