Flourless spice cake

Made with beans! 

Gluten-free spice cake made with white beans!

In the tradition of the chocolate black bean cake,  this variation contains no flour and needn't contain any white sugar.  Although not appropriate for a strict sugar handling diet, it is a nice cheat that doesn't wreck your adrenals and mess with your insulin in the way that a typical dessert would.  Especially if you top it with good fats and proteins to reduce the impact on your blood sugar even more.

Never before in the history of mankind has there been an emergency need to lower blood sugar.  That is, until white flour, refined corn products, and cheap refined sugars became so plentiful and cheap in this country (and others.)

So.....here it is, the recipe. 

Monique’s White Bean Spice Cake

2 cups (one can plain or one pint home canned) white beans

4-5 eggs (5 store bought….we have chickens, some give us huge eggs!)

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp sea salt

½ c lard or butter, just barely melted and not too hot.  Coconut oil might work, too, but didn’t try it.  I used lard from our pastured pigs. 

¼ cup raw wildflower honey

1 dropperful of liquid stevia (or just use a half cup honey instead)

1-2 tsp vanilla, depending on strength (I use homemade, so it varies)

Grease 9” round ceramic or glass dish with lard, generously.  Bake in a preheated 350 oven for 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

This cake is not very sweet, so if you or your family are not concerned about sugar (you probably should be) then add more.  We are no longer acclimated to highly sugared foods and found this to have plenty of sweetness, with a topping that was also sweetened.

To top this, I sweetened some chevre with stevia and vanilla....honey would have been better, but we are still avoiding too much of any sweetness.  Maple syrup would be grand in this topping, with walnuts.

Topped with vanilla chevre...

Then I roasted some almonds that had been soaked and dried, and after turning the heat off and stirring the nuts for a couple more minutes while the pan cooled a bit, I added some butter and tossed to coat the nuts.  Adding the butter too soon results in burnt butter, so be patient and let the pan cool a bit.

Buttered roasted almonds

Then I coarsely chopped the nuts with a pastry blender.  This is how I chop just a few nuts, placing my hand over the blades with each press to keep the nuts from flying all over my kitchen....although Biscuit was waiting at my feed to catch any errant almond bits.  If I needed to chop a lot of nuts, I'd haul out my food processor.  

Chopping a handful of almonds

Walnuts or pecans would be much better in this recipe, however, I am allergic to them so went with the almonds.  Black walnuts would be even better, and I'd sweeten the chevre with real maple syrup....that would be heavenly!  I may have to do this for guests one day.

Yum!

We ended up adding more almonds after the photo was taken.  Full-fat cream cheese would work with this, as would strained yogurt or kefir, or even whipped cream.  Enjoy!