Be Careful How You Dessert Your Family
My sister is visiting! I am so excited to see her. We don’t get to see each other very often because I live on the West Coast and she lives in Toronto. But she’s in the general area (Vancouver and Seattle) on business and thought she’d just hop a ferry and see us for the weekend. All my siblings (my two brothers and my sister) have weight issues. My sister told me awhile ago that she was still feeling really big and wanting to do something about it. She’s been really up and really down (these sound way different when you’re talking about weight instead of mental attitude – eh?) So, I was already to serve interesting, weight loss conscious meals. It not like I shouldn’t be eating these all the time (Yes, I am definitely shoulding on myself!) so planning meals will be easy.
Or so I thought. She’s on a modified Atkins. Sigh. I lost so much weight on the Atkins the time I tried it. But one bad day and it was in the tubes. So here I was all prepared for muesli made with Balkan style yoghurt, shredded apples, mango, peaches etc. and she can’t have the fruit. Sigh. I was going to make Zu (Polish Bison Grass vodka) mojitos. No sugar allowed. So, I actually made the mojitos and stevia worked great!!!! No carb, low carb diets work really well and once you’ve gotten over the sugar/bread cravings you don’t really miss them but – no pizza on a thin multigrain crust! So we had steak, salad (no carrots allowed) and grilled mushrooms and grilled bok choy. I served the bok choy with ponzu sauce and it was glorious.
So we survived the main meal and it came time for the dessert. I made a special chocolate cake. I wasn’t sure if my sister could have chocolate or some sugar. It’s a special – vegetarian, no milk products, gluten-free – chocolate cake. She said she had been a little off her diet so a little further off couldn’t hurt, too much. It is such a moist rich torte-like cake you would never guess what the main ingredient is – CHICK PEAS!
We had a great night and it is so good to talk, share and even watch TV together. I’m glad she’s here and she said I look great! BONUS!
Thanks for listening. ;D Diane
Lynn’s GLUTEN FREE CHICKPEA CHOCOLATE CAKE
10 oz. semi sweet chocolate chopped or 1 ½ cup of chocolate chips
1-19 oz can chickpeas, rinsed and dried
4 eggs
¾ c. granulated sugar
Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a 9” round cake pan and line with parchment paper or dust with cocoa powder.
In a double boiler (or in the microwave, carefully), melt chocolate stirring occasionally, until smooth.
In bowl of food processor, combining chickpeas, eggs, and sugar, process until smooth. Add melted chocolate and blend until smooth.
Spread batter in pan. Bake 50 minutes until knife comes out clean. Cool on in pan on a wire rack for 10-15 min. before transferring to a plate.
OMG Fantastic!
I actually really want to try this! A chickpea cake sounds pretty good to me (plus it has chocolate!). Sounds like you had a wonderfu time with your sister.
It has been wonderful. I forget how much fun we have together. A flight of cider doesn’t hurt, either. The cake is amazing. Just don’t tell anyone it’s made with chickpeas until after they taste it!