This chickpea and chocolate cake is very simple and very healthy, firstly because there is no trace of flour or sugar and secondly, because we can treat ourselves to a sweet treat with less than 250 kilocalories per slice. This chickpea and chocolate cake has nothing to envy to the more traditional cakes and of course it is dairy free, although it does have other allergens such as nuts, eggs and bananas to which we have provided a solution throughout the text.
A cake that looks more like a brownie than a traditional cake, but once again, we leave the recipe open so that everyone can customize it however they want. There are basic ingredients, but if we don't want to add nuts, we don't add them, for example.
Our new recipe once again complies with the fundamental pillars and it is that it is about natural ingredients, easy to find and quite cheap. It is a very healthy recipe and is designed for 6 or 8 people, although if we want less, we will have to subtract quantities.
We will need a more or less powerful mixer if we want the dough to be smooth and firm and without clumps of nuts. We like to find the pieces of walnuts in each bite, in the purest brownie style, but we do tend to put half in the mash and the other half before baking.
In this text we will also explain how to accompany this chickpea and chocolate cake, how to make it vegan and how to keep it for a couple of days in perfect condition. And it is that, a priori, it may seem very easy to make this cake, and it is if we follow this recipe, but an extra piece of information never hurts to guide us in the process or to improve the result.
Tips to improve the recipe
To improve this chickpea and chocolate cake, the first thing is to use a healthy sweetener such as erythritol and Stevia, as we are going to add in our recipe. Many people use brown sugar believing that it is better than white sugar, but it is the same and just as unhealthy.
If we want the dough to be fine and all the ingredients are very well integrated, it is best to use a Thermomix or some kitchen robot similar. We can also do it manually with some rods or a traditional hand blender.
Cocoa powder must be pure cocoa, at least 80%. The Valor brand of chocolates usually has jars of cocoa powder with different percentages. If we are not used to 100% pure cocoa powder, we will have to go down to a maximum of 75% or 80%. The purer, the healthier it will be.
The banana that we are going to use must be ripe, or very mature, since it will have a lot of sweetness. A banana, the more ripe it is, the more carbohydrates it has, so the calories increase. We can use a yellow banana, but we will lose that sweet touch that will characterize this chickpea and chocolate cake so much. If we are allergic to bananas, we can replace it with a creamy yogurt or roasted pumpkin.
Regarding the chickpeas, we can cook them ourselves and make the more homemade recipe, or buy them directly cooked in a jar, which is usually very cheap. What we have to do is empty the jar into a drainer and wait for all the liquid to go away and then add them to the brownie recipe that we are preparing.
Can it be vegan?
A priori it is not a vegan recipe, but it is vegetarian, or more specifically lacto-ovo vegetarian, since among the ingredients we have eggs. This is not a problem, except for those who follow a vegan diet faithful to its principles.
From now on we say yes, that we can make a small change and turn this cake into a vegan dessert with total discretion, ease, without sacrificing anything else, just the eggs. If near where we live, or we are used to buying it, there are vegan egg mix, then, we can use it for our recipe. In this way we will have a healthy and vegan chickpea and chocolate cake.
To decorate the cake we can use banana slices, more nuts or other dried fruits, grated chocolate, icing sugar, grated orange peel, etc. Anything healthy is welcome. We must also keep in mind that all those extras will make each serving increase in calories.
If we normally never have a very healthy, varied diet and do sports regularly, then we could treat ourselves to this chickpea and chocolate sponge cake and several delicious extras. We can use this cake to eat it with our coffee or milk.
So you can keep it 48 hours
It is difficult to keep a cake for more than 24 or 48 hours, which is why we always recommend making small quantities so that we can finish it throughout that day. If there are several slices left over, don't panic, we have the perfect solution.
If we have a tupperware at home with a lid, we put a napkin or parchment paper that covers the base and the interior walls of the tupperware and we put the slices vertically and in a row. You have to avoid putting one on top of the other, since the first one will dry out and the last one will be very crushed and wet.
We recommend keeping the tupperware in the fridge, but not on the door, since there are many changes in temperature and food lasts less time in good condition.
In the explanation of this recipe we will see that before serving we can put the cake in the fridge so that it is very cold when we go to eat it. All this helps it to take consistency, that is, nothing prevents us from keeping the cake in the fridge to keep it for a maximum of 48 hours.
It is not recommended to keep opening and closing the lid, since the entry of oxygen inside the tupperware will cause bacteria to proliferate and the chickpea and chocolate cake will go bad in a matter of hours. Nor do we recommend handling the pieces with dirty hands instead of using clean utensils and immediately closing the tupperware and returning it to the refrigerator.
