Easy-Peasy Gluten Free Black Bean Chocolate Cake

This past weekend we celebrated several birthdays!  Yay for birthdays!

Saturday we celebrated my friend's oldest daughter's sweet 16! We had a blast at her home grilling hot dogs, making s'mores around the fire, and eating too much cake!  Us moms got a chance to sit down and chit chat, which was sorely needed. The men did manly things like catering to their inner pyro.

Sunday we had a family gathering at our house to celebrate both Little Miss Helpful's birthday and my mother's birthday.

It was nice having our family here to celebrate and enjoy the day with us.  And LMH really loved her presents, which were all artsy supplies!  No.. she really did love them!  She is easy peasy to keep happy. :)

I wanted to make a cake that was a bit healthier, and I have several friends in the Gluten Free circle rave about Black Bean Chocolate Cake.  So I decided to give it a go! 

A quick Google search landed me on A Hippie With a Minivan and her recipe for Black Bean Chocolate Cake. 

At first I was a bit skeptical, because I have never made a cake without flour before.  But this cake turned out so moist and definitely chocolatety!   Plus it filled the house with the most amazing chocolate cake aroma ever!  

When it was done I kept it simple with just a small dusting of powdered sugar, topped with some frozen strawberries and blueberries. (Fresh berries would of been better, but I only had frozen on hand).  No overly sugary frosting needed for this cake!   

When my mom tried it, she loved it and even said it was better than normal chocolate cake.

I tweaked the recipe a bit.   I used regular granulated sugar, because that is all I had on hand.  I want to play around with the recipe to try to make this with raw honey instead of sugar.

And I mixed everything together in the blender.   This made it really quick and easy and cut down on the amount of dirty dishes!   I ended up making 3 cakes in a very short amount of time.  :)

Little Miss Sunshine and Little Miss Helpful love making the cake for Grandma!

Here is the recipe with the steps I took.

Easy-Peasy Black Bean Chocolate Cake

1- 15 oz can black beans drained and rinsed or 2 cups cooked black beans, drained and rinsed*

5 large eggs

1 Tblspn vanilla extract

3/4 cup granulated sugar

6 Tblspns butter - softened at room temperature

1/2 tspn salt

6 Tblspns Cocoa Powder (I used Nestle Toll House Cocoa)

1/2 tspn baking soda

1 tspn baking powder 

1 Tblspn water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.   

Grease a 9" circular pan or a 8x8" square pan.  Grease with shortening or coconut oil, and dust lightly with cocoa powder.

 In a blender - Add black beans, 3 eggs, vanilla extract, sugar, butter, and salt.  Blend on the highest setting (liquify setting on my blender)  until the beans are liquified and all items are mixed well. This took about 45 seconds to a minute in my blender.

To the blender - Add remaining two eggs, Cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and water.   Blend on the "blend" or "mix" setting until all ingredients are incorporated and mixed well.

Pour cake batter from the blender into the cake pan.  Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes.   Start doing the toothpick poke test for doneness at 35 minutes and adjust the cook time accordingly.  Cake is done when the top is rounded and you can insert a toothpick into the center and it comes out clean and dry.

Remove from the oven and let cool on a cooling rack.  Remove from cake pan, cut into serving size slices.  Put a slice on a dessert plate, dust lightly with powdered sugar.  

Top with your favorite berries and fresh home made whipped cream. 

Serve and enjoy with love and gratitude for another blessed day with your family and friends.

* 1 cup dried black beans equals about 2 cups after soaking and cooking.

This recipe originally found at A Hippie with a Minivan. and tweaked a bit by me. Please stop by her blog and tell her hello!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Today is our 10th anniversary! It is hard to believe that we have been married for a decade. I still vividly remember walking down the isle to become Jerimiah's young bride. We have both gone through so much together, and accomplished more than we know. Truely, if it wasn't for the grace of God, I don't think either one of us would still be here. But we are here, we made it this far, and we are still going strong. My love for Jerimiah is stronger than ever before. I am so proud to be his not so young wife forever more!

Jada is 5 months old!!!

My dear sweet Jada is 5 months old today. It seems so long ago since she was born, but in other ways it only feels like yesterday.

I took pictures of her today. But my camera met an unexpected end. I accidentally knocked it off the desk while uploading all the pictures and the lense is now jammed. I have the camera taken apart and will try to fix it. If I can't I'll take it into a repair shop and see if they can bring it back to life.

But until then here is a picture of her taken on Friday.

Jada Devine Childress.

When we first chose her name, I never really thought to research the meaning. So recently I was doing searches on all our girls names.

The most popular meaning of Jada is an elaborated form of Jade, which is a precious stone.

But searching on ttp://www.behindthename.com/ led me to a second meaning. Jada means "he knows" in Hebrew.

Devine is our elaboration of the English word divine meaning "divine, godlike". A search on http://cf.blueletterbible.org/ leads to the Vine's definition of divine, which states : "Divine" (from theos, "God"), is used of the power of God, 2Pe 1:3, and of His nature.

So in a round about way, she is our precious jewel. Full of the nature of God. And a constant reminder that "He Knows".

Her blue eyes are not staying blue. They are changing, and appear to either brown or hazel. She is not bald like her older sisters were, but she is growing darker hair. And she smiles all the time (until I try to take a picture). And she is really starting to talk and laugh. Last night all the way home Jordan and Joelle were giggling. Jada was giggling, squealing, and blowing rasberries right back at them. It was so funny!

She really is a blessing. A precious gift from God. And we all treasure each moment with her.

Update: My camera is officially dead. May it rest in peace.