“I pledge to eat and feed my family only real ingredients I can recognise or spell.”
Last week, I signed the Organix #nojunk pledge because children need real food – not additives, fillers or artificial processes that produce profits for food manufacturers yet ill health for our children.
Is this right? NO!
I promised a #nojunk cake and here it is.
The recipe is thanks to Olea’s mum. Olea and my granddaughter Tayda are schoolchums. After I had contributed a wheat-free raw date and lemon cake to my granddaughter’s 5th birthday party, Olea’s mum wrote out there-and-then a healthy wheat-free recipe (see pic) using…beans.
I am a big fan of beans thanks to The Bean Book by Rose Elliot, my cooking bible when my own children were little in the 1980s.
Healthy beans
Beans are seeds, a plant’s future offspring. They spill on the soil where they wait for the right conditions to germinate. Their food reserves support this process and is also good for us when we eat them. Packed with protein, vitamins and minerals, beans are nutritional powerhouses.
Big yet compact, their plentiful food stores are low-fat and high-energy. They quieten sugar-levels because of their high-fibre – the soluble sort that gently coats the gut and is slow-acting – and have high-levels of cancer-busting antioxidants. (Above from my intro on beans in Make More of Peas and Beans).
Olea’s mum’s #nojunk bean cake
The cast assembled (clockwise from top): eggs, pot of honey, melted chocolate over a drained tin of butter beans, ground almonds with baking powder and melted butter.
Blend up:
- 1 tin of cooked beans (butter/kidney/black – unsalted, drained)
- 4 eggs
- 100 – 150g ground almonds
- 6 tablespoons of coconut oil or (melted) butter
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda plus natural flavouring (spice, essence, ginger, vanilla etc)
- 1/2 cup sweetener
Lightly grease baking tin. Bake 180° 30 – 40 mins-ish.
I omitted the 1/2 tsp of baking powder, using instead an extra egg (5 eggs in total). I used organic eggs and butter for extra nutritional value (and guaranteed high animal welfare standards). As sweetener, I used half a jar of honey for low-glycemic slow release sweetness (no one noticed honey taste at all).
For flavouring, I used a 150g bar of Green & Black’s organic dark chocolate, melted in a pan over another pan of boiling water, and blended into the cake mix. I also dribbled melted Green & Black’s chocolate on the cooled cake.
I blended all the ingredients together with my trusty £20 hand-blender and poured the cake mixture into a fluted tin that once belonged to my grandmother. (When my mother gave me her cake tins recently, she said: “It feels like the royal abdication.”).
I served the cake with Biona organic sour cherries from a jar for the adults.
Everyone who tasted the cake pronounced it a success.
And no one guessed the mystery ingredient was healthy wholefood beans! 
And….Join the #NoJunk Challenge!
Hey, I have just entered this blog post in the Organix #NoJunk Challenge Blog Hop…fingers crossed!
Real Food Lover 
Beans in a cake sounds interesting! Some of the very best cakes aren’t the usual sugar, eggs and butter mix added to flour. Sounds worth a go. Good habit for children too – if your they get used to good food, packet stuff just doesn’t cut it when they get older.
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I can say from expiernce (yum, lick fingers and chops) it was really delicious. It was light and not sweet, I liked the slightly bitty texture. I am glad I didnt see the list of ingredients before hand. It would certainly have challenged my prejudices. I have to say, I have learnt with you, eat first, ask later. And I didnt feel heavy afterwards.
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Always an honour if any recipe gains your gourmet approval, Melle Geraldine, especially when I adulterate it with hippy ingredients! Glad I did not tell you about the beans…
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Excellent idea not to use wheat…about 50 years ago ‘they’ changed its genetic makeup and the way wheat is grown…and now it’s entirely unsuited to the digestion of humans.
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Hmmm I was wondering what to do with that dusty and undervalued can of butter beans in the back of my store cupboard and what better way to ‘liberate’ them than in a chocolate cake! this gluten-free gal cant wait to try out this recipe (sans the baking powder).
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This is an absolute triumph. What a find!! Elisabeth, thanks again for a wonderful recipe idea!
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I’ve never “bean” so impressed! An ingenious substitute for wheat, can’t wait to try it.
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It was delicious – and what a good idea!
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It was v.delicious and super digestable. Was enjoyed by all, even an unusual child who claims not to like chocolate (?!). And apparently much easier to make than a conventional cake!
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Thanks, Ingrid Rose. Yes, super digestable which is how I like my grub. I think food is not only about the taste but how it sits in your gut afterwards (she said in a ladylike way).
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Brilliant idea! I don’t do well with wheat… And it sounds really easy to make.
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Many thanks. I do not do well with wheat either. It blows me out and gives me a gut ache, I think it is because modern wheat has been so hybridised…The beans are indeed a brilliant substitute but I cannot claim any credit apart from passing it on.
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Forgot to say that I tried your cake too. i think I was ‘under-whelmed’ at first but with each mouthful I tasted an ever expanding richness of flavour and depth. It’s great being your friend-keep the ingenious cake recipes coming!
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Ah, thanks, Nadia. It was great to have a taster! Good timing.
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I LOVE your added comment!
Thanks so much x Elisabeth
Elisabeth Winkler
Winkler Media communications Real Food Lover @ewinkler
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Sounds delicious ..looking forward to trying the chocolate cake
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I think the sour cherries are the stroke of brilliance– last year I experimented some with all the black-bean brownie recipes afloat on the web and found that sour was defo the flavour that bolstered them. Hey, do you know there are various recipes for Sauerkraut Chocolate cake– maybe we need to be trying the. 🙂
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Sauerkraut Chocolate cake??!! Hey, hit me with it, baby! I like the sound of that!
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