I've decided to put the question to you for the next few Real Food posts. If there is anything you really enjoy eating, but you're avoiding it because it's not organic or real food, and you're not sure what to substitute, where to make it into a healthy meal, please send your recipes on to me and I will play and find the right mix so that your recipe turns into something healthy and organic and I'll post it on a Friday. You can send your ideas to mellowhealth@melanielowe.co.za.
For today, I decided to go with something I made last year for GLM's birthday dinner, chocolate cake! We love chocolate cake and I have really struggled to get the recipe right so that it's a nice healthy, still tasty, cake. Last year we had a dinner party at a little Thai restaurant in Paulshof called Thai Cafe. We highly recommend it! It is a sweet, quiet, unassuming little place and that is why she chose it. GLM's parties have a tendency to turn a bit wild;) It's never intended, but it ALWAYS happens!
Things were nice and calm until they pulled out the karaoke... Then someone pulled out an 80s cd, The Locomotion came on, and things went pear-shaped. Strangers were joining onto the train! We opened a makeshift dance floor and ended up keeping the poor little owners busy until 2am! They LOVED us;) They were dancing WITH us by the end and were sad to see us go. I don't think they've ever had so much business in one night;)
But I digress... I surprised GLM with a chocolate cake early in the evening and it was polished off. The plate was licked clean;) The crazy thing is it was one of the cakes that I had to make in such a huge rush because I didn't want her to know about it, so I just slapped ingredients together, experimented with the icing, cried a few tears of frustration when it went wrong, then experimented some more with the mess up, and ended up with a caramel-crunch chocolate cake somehow! I'm going to see if I can get it all down in this recipe and I hope you also have some success with it!
Preparing the flour:
11/2 cups chickpea flour
1/4 cup raw cocoa powder
3/4 cup water
2 Tbs yogurt
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl
Place a dishcloth over the bowl and leave in a corner of the kitchen to soak for 24hrs
(If you're unsure why we do this, read this post and then this post. Cocoa also needs to be fermented which is why I add it to the flour mix)
Cake ingredients:
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp bicarb
1 tsp baking powder
5 eggs
2 Tbs yogurt (Yogurt is a GREAT egg replacer so I use it instead of eggs but you can also just add 6 eggs instead of yogurt)
1/3 cup butter
1 cup organic sugar OR 1/2 cup raw honey
1 Tbs vanilla extract (optional: I NEVER have it at home so I often just skip it. Dischem sells the REAL one, not the processed one you find at grocery stores)
Method:
- Preheat oven to 180°C
- Take your soaked flour mix and add eggs, yogurt, butter and sugar (or honey) and vanilla extract
- Blend until mixed in
- Add all dry ingredients
- Blend again until smooth
- Grease two round baking tins, WELL (this is the part where I always fall down. No matter how well I grease them it's a mission getting them out intact!)
- Divide mixture up between baking tins. (I always make my bottom cake a little bigger. Not necessary at all though, it's just my thing!)
- Pop in the oven for about 40-45 mins. Poke with a toothpick to check it (time depends on your oven. My door never closes properly so I have to start watching it from about 40mins)
- Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5mins
- Attempt to remove cakes from tins, GENTLY and leave to cool for an hour. (depending on weather! Due to time constraints I stuck mine in the freezer for 10mins and it worked like a bomb)
Caramel-crunch icing
This was a TOTAL accident!
Ingredients:
1 cup organic sugar
10 Tbs butter
2 Tbs milk
1 slab dark organic chocolate (Woolies sells a delicious one)
Method:
- Place sugar, 4 Tbs butter, milk and 1/2 slab chocolate in a small pot and bring ingredients to boil
- Simmer for about 5-10 minutes (or until the sugar starts to caramelise)
- Remove from heat and place in the freezer for 5 minutes
- In a bowl, place 6 Tbs butter
- Cream butter using a mixer
- Remove caramelised mixture from freezer and mix for a minute
- Add to creamed butter and mix together until creamy (it won't be smooth because the sugar has caramelised but don't worry, that's the point of caramel-crunch!)
- Spread all over cakes once cakes are cooled (Very NB!)
- Grate remaining chocolate and sprinkle all over the top of the cake
- Serve!
Granted, this is full of sugar so probably not as healthy as you'd like, but chickpea flour has far fewer calories than normal flour AND soaking the flour and cocoa makes it far more nutritious. There is also a good amount of protein in the cake from the flour, eggs and yogurt so it won't give you a sugar high. All in all, a really tasty, moist, nutritious chocolate cake. By the way, the candles on the cake are homemade candles made with beeswax to avoid getting anything toxic on the cake from store-bought candles! Yes, I'm THAT crazy;)
Have a super weekend!
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