Vegan kidney bean chocolate cake that’s without refined sugar or carbohydrates. You wouldn’t guess beans from the taste as even people that don’t like beans or loved this cake.

This healthy cacao cake is rich, chocolatey, moist and creamy despite being vegan, low sugar and gluten-free.

Suitable for everyone including nut-free, gluten-free, grain-free, wheat-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free and oil-free diets. That may sound like a long list but trust me this healthy cake is delicious and avoids all the main allergens.

As you might have guessed I’m no expert at baking – it’s no coincidence that all my recipes are simple and easy. Lots of cake recipes do say to do things in a certain order, adding slowly until just the right point has been reached.

I don’t find this is necessary for this cake to work out really well – just blend everything together and bake! The final result does have a fudgy almost uncooked texture to it, but this is due to the ingredients.

Kidney Bean and Coconut Chocolate Cake Video

Play on YouTube.

With this cake the dough is fine to taste before baking to make sure the right level of sweetness and chocolate is present. In fact, I could quite happily just eat the dough raw like cookie dough.

Chia seeds are used instead of eggs here as they help make a fluffy cake with a great texture. They don’t quite have the same lift so this cake is denser than a typical chocolate cake.

I was originally going to bake this in two halves, just like the chocolate quinoa avocado fudge cake, but while making I changed my mind as the dough was quite solid. I also was concerned that the coconut cream in the middle wouldn’t stay in place once sandwiched.

After it was baked I took the somewhat risky decision to slice in half and it worked out really well (even with awful knife skills due to filming from two camera angles).

If you’re not going to be icing the cake then it works well to add half a cup of oats into the cake mixture. These help keep it bit more moist and fluffy as it can be a bit dry if it isn’t frosted.

I often make this as a tray bake and dollop on coconut cream just to make life easier.

A small jug blender or coffee grinder works well to grind the chia seeds. If you don’t have one then just blend using a food processor – you just have to be careful about adding ingredients in the right order.

With just a food processor and add the coconut and chia seeds dry first and blitz for a few minutes until they’re all broken up.

You can make in a bullet device but it is a bit fiddly as it needs to be done in several batches and shook while blending.

This cake is oil-free and the fats mainly come from the coconut meat and chia seeds. Obviously, it still contains lots of fats from the seeds but they haven’t been processed and refined to remove just the fat so the fiber is still present.

You might have heard that kidney beans are toxic. This is the case when they are not cooked as they do need to be soaked then boiled. Kidney beans straight from a can have already been cooked and are a very healthy food.

I thought one tin of coconut milk wouldn’t be enough to ice the cake. But honestly, a thin layer of the coconut cream is more than enough as it’s so rich. You can add some sweetness and vanilla to the cream when you whip it if you like. I felt that with the sweetness of the cake that just pure coconut cream would work best.