A few years ago I worked as a receptionist at a fine stringed instruments dealer. It was a very interesting cultural experience, because we sold extremely expensive violins, violas and cellos to people with a good deal of money. It was, and has been so far, my only true exposure to this slice of the music industry. It was also a very interesting and enjoyable foray into fine chocolates, desserts and other culinary delights. This was prior to my swearing off of cheese, milk and other dairy items, so I’ll confess that I had quite a few non-vegan experiences (and one non-vegetarian one, which I didn’t realize until later – um yeah, imitation crab is still real fish, FYI).

Whenever it was someone’s birthday, or a staff person was leaving for greener pastures, or because we all needed a good morale booster someone would pop over to Soutine, a lovely little bakery on the Upper West Side, and grab, more often than not, a flourless chocolate cake. It was spectacular. (If you are not a vegan or a part-time one at least, and if you are ever in NYC, you must have a dessert from Soutine. Otherwise, you definitely must have a dessert from Babycakes, which has many wonderful vegan and gluten-free desserts. It’s located in the Chinatown/Little Italy region of Manhattan.)

So when I saw what this month’s Daring Bakers challenge was, I thought back to the days of endless classical music and to those moments filled with dessert, wine and workplace camaraderie. Then after wondering how on earth I was supposed to veganize something that relies mostly on eggs, I encountered a technically vegan flourless chocolate cake from a fellow Daring Baker and vegan, Hannah of BitterSweet. I had to try her recipe, Daring Bakers challenge or no solely because of the fact that the base of the recipe is black-eyed peas. Using legumes in place of flour seemed most unusual, but intriguing to me, and I ventured ahead.

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Vegan Flourless Chocolate Cake
This recipe comes from Hannah of BitterSweet

• 2 cups black-eyed peas, cooked
• 1 12-ounce package extra-firm silken tofu
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup natural cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon instant coffee powder (note that I left this out)
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt

If you are cooking the black-eyed peas yourself, you can soak the peas overnight, then give them a good rinse before cooking them for a couple of hours (only cook in plain water – do not add salt!). At that point, check them to make sure that they are fully cooked.

Once they are done, give them a good rinse.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and lightly grease a 9×5 loaf pan or a 9-inch springform pan.

Toss both the black-eyed peas and the tofu into your food processor or blender, and let it run until the mixture is completely smooth.

Give it a good long time to work, since it would be rather unpleasant to find any whole beans in your cake.

Add in the sugar and coffee powder, and pulse to combine.

Separately, melt the chocolate and stir well until smooth before adding into the blender or food processor.

Once you’ve added the chocolate to the blender or food processor, let it run for a minute until fully incorporated. Unfortunately I was finding it difficult to get it well blended in a blender, so I had to switch to our food processor.

Scrape down the sides to make sure you aren’t missing anything, and give it another minute to process. Finally, add the cocoa, coffee powder, baking powder, soda, and salt, and pulse to combine.

Pour and then spread the mixture into your prepared pan, leveling off the top with your spatula as best you can.

Bake for 60 – 70 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean. Let it cool completely in the pan before serving.

I was surprised, but you can’t taste the peas. You’d think you would be able to, but if you think about it, you can’t really taste flour in regular cakes or desserts. You’re tasting a whole host of ingredients that harmonize together to offer up a sweet sensation. I will say, though, that this tasted best on the first day, and after that it did become a little dry. It also needed some sort of vegan vanilla ice cream or coconut sorbet, but I didn’t have any on hand (it’s so expensive these days!). Still, we can’t help but help ourselves when we have chocolate dessert sitting around, waiting to be eaten. This is why this cake is now just a memory. ;)

I’m now very inspired to find other dessert recipes that utilize beans as a base. We’ve noticed lately that flour has gone up in price significantly, yet dry beans still remain pretty cheap. Therefore it seems that it is probably less expensive, and potentially more healthy to use beans in place of flour. (I can’t imagine it being a 1:1 ratio, however.) Anyone know of any good recipes?

Our wedding was unconventional. We didn’t want to have the cookie cutter wedding that so many people seem to have these days. Instead, my husband suggested, why don’t we do a picnic? That seemed like an interesting idea, and one that eventually caught on.

Our wedding was in Central Park near the Bow Bridge. We had everyone sit in a circle on blankets, and after we got settled we had everyone share advice and stories for us. Eventually we expressed how we felt about each other (a.k.a. vows), and then had everyone eat snacks and desserts out of our picnic baskets (really galvanized buckets, but they still looked really nice). Aside from occasional bits of rain, it was nice and it was nice to do something that was more simple and less stressful than a full blown wedding.

As is the case with all weddings there are things that don’t exactly go right. When we look back on our wedding there are a few things that we would change, but one of the major things we would have done differently was our cake. We had purchased a variety of desserts for people to eat because we wanted to make sure everyone had something that they would enjoy. Then we decided to have a small cake custom made for us.

The idea was that this cake would look like a present like so many gorgeous cakes we had seen online. Something got lost in translation with the baker and we got this:

I know – it doesn’t look bad, but I’ll be honest with you – it’s just not what we imagined. And the taste wasn’t as good as what we had hoped for (the cake, among other things, was very last minute).

This last Thursday was our third wedding anniversary, and as with past anniversaries we tried to make up for that weird cake by making at least a better tasting dessert. And let me tell you – this tasted a-maz-ing, but it didn’t look a-maz-ing (maybe next year I’ll try for that).

Chocolate Cake
Known as Excellent Vegan Wacky Cake on VegWeb.com

• 2 Tbsp. cocoa
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 tsp. vinegar
• 5 Tbsp. cooking oil or vegan butter
• 1 cup water

Preheat oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mix the dry ingredients into one bowl.

First the cocoa.

Then the flour.

Next the salt.

Very quickly – Real Salt is the salt that I use. My mom introduced it to me. It tastes better than regular salt you get, but it is a little more expensive. Here’s a picture:

Add the baking soda.

Then add the sugar. I used a combination of turbinado and white sugar because I ran out of the first.

I like to mix my dry ingredients with a whisk. I’ve found that the ingredients incorporate better this way than if I were to just use a spoon.

This is how it should look mixed.

Now combine and mix your wet ingredients into a separate, larger bowl.

Vanilla – you’ll learn more about this one in a future post. Also, since this is dry, I should have mixed this with my dry ingredients. I added a little liquid vanilla extract to compensate.

White vinegar. I’m thinking apple cider vinegar might work too.

Add your vegan butter.

Here’s a picture of the tub of Earth Balance. When we were first considering going vegan a few years ago we discovered this vegan butter. It’s a fantastic replacement for real butter or margarine, although a little expensive. Notice it says it’s trans fat free, lactose free, and gluten free.

Then add water.

Mix it all together.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet slowly and mix.

Once it is completely mixed it should look something like this:

The granular bits are the turbinado sugar.

I decided that I’d add some of these Trader Joe’s chocolate chips to the batter. Not a good idea.

It looks like a good idea, but I’m telling you – it’s not.

Pour into a cake pan of your choice. This is not a lot of batter, so I’m not sure that a bundt cake pan is a good idea. it might be better to go with a cupcake pan or a square baking pan/dish.

Bake for 25-30 minutes.

When you take it out it may not feel like it is completely done, but don’t worry – it will firm up after a few minutes.

Now this is where I will embarrass myself. Trader Joe’s sells some pretty delicious chocolate, but these chips sank to the bottom of the pan and managed to basically burn to the bottom of the pan. This resulted in a very sad cosmetic tragedy:

This is where we’ll make some chocolate icing and try to cover the cake’s flaws.

Chocolate Frosting
Based on a recipe from VegWeb.com

• 1/2 cup vegan butter (I used Earth Balance again)
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
• 2 Tbsp. vegan milk (I used almond milk)
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• dash of salt

Melt butter or bring it to room temperature.

Add vegan powdered sugar, salt, vanilla, chocolate and soymilk.

Stir ingredients together well.

It’s up to you, but you can stick the frosting in the refrigerator first to get it to firm up a little bit, but it will spread faster and easier if you go ahead and just put it on immediately. It probably won’t be pretty, though.

Let me say that although this had cosmetic flaws, this cake was TO DIE FOR. This was amazingly good. Let me tell you, I made a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting last year or the year before and we kept saying, yeah this is good, but it’s weird. THIS WAS A-MAZ-ING.

But let me warn you, this is calorie dense (I didn’t measure, but come on – look at the ingredients). I had a small slice this morning and I bet you it was at least a couple hundred calories.

Happy Anniversary dear. May we have many more to come.

If not because I love you, then because I love this AWESOME cake and I want it next year. But prettier.