Pieces of Elyse

Bliss balls have gone mainstream and kale’s cruciferious companions are green with envy at its popularity, and all the while chickpea cupcakes are dying to be cut a break. It could be that us health nuts have just been really good at keeping them a secret, or maybe it’s the fact that eating them seems to require a leap of faith that would see the muncher safely clear the Grand Canyon. Whatever the reason, I think this recipe will show you that we have nothing to fear from these delightful creatures because their rich, moist deliciousness will make every straight-laced cupcake shake in their boots.

There are a lot of chocolate chickpea cupcake recipes on the web, but this one is adapted from ibreathimhungry.com because by the looks of her name we’d get along famously.

Please note: if you want the recipe without my pesky commentary, head straight to the end of the article where you’ll find it in all its dot-pointed glory.

Preheat your oven to 180C then rinse a 425g can of chickpeas and chuck them into a food processor with 1/3 cup almond milk. Blitz past the point of hummus until the mixture is completely smooth, not a single chickpea chunk should be left standing.

I feel the need to tell you at this point that I thought my retro 70s blender would do the trick for this, but it conked out and then my blender went out in sympathy. I resorted to my trusty Bah Mix but by the time I had my silky chickpea smoothie my kitchen looked like this…..

Anyway, after the great appliance massacre of 2015, I proceeded to add 4 eggs to the chickpea smoothie and mixed them in one-by-one.

I then melted 2 tablespoons of coconut oil and added this to the mix, along with 1/2 cup cocoa (or cacao if you’re fancy)

One teaspoon of baking powder and half a cup of castor sugar (the recipe called for sugar substitute but I didn’t have any and there’s something about using it in baking that makes me nervy).

Another tip from experience is to not faff around for too long taking pictures of your mixture, especially if it’s winter. You will end up with a coconut oil iceberg that’s a right pain to remelt (if this does happen, don’t attempt to mush it like I did. Try and take it out in one piece and reheat it separately).

Once the mix is nicely combined, don’t panic if it’s super runny, pour it into 12 suitably pretty cupcake pans and bake for 25 minutes. The beauties are done when a skewer comes out clean.

Now, I cheated on ibreathimhungry.com with chocolatecoveredkatie.com when I made the icing and followed (mostly) her recipe for frosting shots.

All you do is whip up a 270ml tin of coconut cream (who knew you could whip coconut cream?! This has literally changed my life!) with 1/4 cup cocoa, a teaspoon of vanilla essence and about 7 drops of stevia. Pop the mix in a piping bag and swirl it onto the cooled cakes and voila!

I command you to enjoy these intense, fudgey morsels of chocolate heaven with a cup of English Breakfast tea whilst you marvel at the mystery of how a humble can of chickpeas can be made to taste so bloody delicious.

Recipe

Ingredients

Cakes

• 425g chickpeas
• 1/3 cup almond milk
• 4 eggs
• 2 TBS coconut oil
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup castor sugar

Icing

• 270ml coconut cream
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 7 drops stevia

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Rinse chickpeas and put them in a food processor with the almond milk and blitz until completely smooth.
3. Pour into a mixing bowl and add eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.
4. Add the coconut oil, cocoa, baking powder and sugar and mix until combined (it will be runny!)
5. Pour into 12 cupcake pans and bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
6. Cool.
7. To make icing, use an electric mixer to whip up coconut cream, cocoa, vanilla and stevia until light and fluffy.
8. Spoon into a piping bag and swirl onto cakes.
9. Enjoy with a hot cup of tea!