Saturday, July 23, 2011

Black Bean... Cake!

We've all heard of the chocolate cake or brownies made using black beans instead of flour. After trying one of these cupcakes that a friend made, I was amazed and finally decided to try it.

It's so freaking easy, and I have to admit I was skeptical as I was mixing the batter together. It's very wet. And even though I pureed the heck out of the beans, there were little bean skin pieces floating around in it.

However, when they came out of the oven and eventually made their way into my mouth, I was a believer all over again.

I used the recipe provided at Chocolate and Carrots (darling blog). Instead of all the embellishments, I made the basic cake recipe and added store-bought german chocolate icing for my sister's favorite birthday cake.

Unfortunately, the only picture I took was one with my crappy camera phone, sent to her with a note: Come over after work. (She did.)


They are moist, a bit dense, and perfectly chocolatey.

I fed them to my family, watched them eating, and asked, "You wanna know what's in there??"
They stopped eating and their faces became skeptical. When I told them, they were all, "No way!" and polished them off. You really can't tell there are beans in the batter.

One thing to note: they don't rise very high and get that traditional domed cupcake shape; I suppose it's just the nature of the recipe, but it's ok because you get to put more icing on that way. :o)

So, whether you make the surprise cupcakes with peanut butter frosting (which are, by the way, AH-MAY-ZING) or just use the plain chocolate cake recipe, it's all good.

Just make them.

1 comment:

Jen said...

Woot your family members got tricked =) I think I'll be making these again next time for Logan's birthday...or maybe sooner than that...going to try more baking soda/powder to get them to rise a bit more this time around. Glad they liked em and you got to eat them all over again! Definitely going to use the german icing next time.