Black Bean Chocolate Cake

We celebrated my brother's birthday a few days ago. And I, as usual, had trouble figuring out what to do for the celebration. Luckily, my coworker told me about a chocolate cake his aunt used to make for him as a kid. He said that his aunt refused to tell him what was in the cake because if he knew, he probably wouldn't want to eat it anymore. It turns out the cake was made with black beans instead of flour.

I grew up in a family where eating "healthy foods" was the rule: organic, whole grains, no processed sugars, etc. Frankly, I didn't care much for it as a child. As an adult, I tend to shy away from "hippie" food, but still retain an appreciation for healthy eating. I believe that food should taste good in its own right, and that the goal of using healthy ingredients shouldn't be to replicate something else that already exists like bacon (tofurky).

Even though I was skeptical about this bean cake, I decided to try it since my coworker isn't on the health foods band wagon. The end result was a moist, rich chocolate cake, healthy enough to eat for breakfast! On top of that, it's flour less, gluten-free, (vegan), and has low sugar content (healthier if you use unrefined).

I made the following recipe which I found online as well as some homemade whip cream. Since I don't have any dietary restrictions, I used butter. But, you can make this a vegan recipe with equal deliciousness.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Makes a 9" one layer cake

Ingredients:
1-15 ounce can of unseasoned black beans
OR 1 1/2 cup cooked beans, any color
5 large eggs
1 tbs vanilla extract
1/2 tsp sea salt
6 tbs unsalted butter
1/2 - 1 1/4 cup sugar (sugar substitute)
6 tbs unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tps baking powder
1 1/2 tps baking soda
1/2 tps water (omit is using honey or other liquid sweetener)
5 large eggs


Preparation:
Drain and rinse beans. Shake of excess water. Place beans, 3 eggs, vanilla, sugar and salt into blender. Blend on high until beans are completely liquefied. Whisk together cocoa powder, baking soda, and baking powder. Beat butter with sweetener until light and fluffy. Add remaining two eggs, beating for a minute after each addition. Pour bean batter into egg mixture and mix. Stir in cocoa powder and beat batter on high for one minute, until smooth. Scrape batter into pan and smooth the top. Grip pan firmly by the edges and rap it on the counter a few times to pop any air bubbles. 

Preheat oven to 325F. Grease 9" round pan with olive oil and dust with cocoa powder on the inside of the pan, tapping to evenly distribute. Cut a round of parchment paper and line the bottom of the pan and grease lightly. 

Bake for 40-45 minutes. Cake is done with the top is rounded and firm to the touch. After 10 minutes, turn out cake from pan, and flip over again on to a cooling rack. Let cool until cake reaches room temperature, then cover in plastic wrap or with cake dome (I use an overturned plastic chip bowl). For BEST flavor, let cake sit over night. I promise this cake will not have a hint of beaniness after letting it sit for eight hours! If you are stacking this cake, level the top with a long serrated knife, shaving off layers until it is flat and even. Frost immediately before serving.

Garlic - The Stinking Rose

The weekend is here and it's finally feeling like spring!

Spring means it's time for planting! I'm excited about starting on the farm, but also sad I won't be actively tending my home garden this year. If you haven't planned out your garden for this year, and need a place to start, check out www.growveg.com. They make a virtual garden planning tool which you can use to figure out planting dates, spacing, care, etc. There is a 30-day free trial which will give you plenty of time to plan your garden. If you can't decide what to plant this year, my suggestion is to plant what you love to eat!

I love garlic. I love the smell, the heat, its culinary uses, and best of all, it helps keep pests away in my garden. I planted several varieties of garlic last fall including: Elephant, Korean, Music, and Chesnok. Hopefully they will still turn out with minimal care. As long as spring doesn't come too early, we probably won't experience another bout of "Aster yellows", a native disease which devastated entire crops of garlic in Minnesota in 2012 due in large part to our extraordinarily mild winter.

Garlic - Overview
If you live in an urban setting like I do, you are probably only exposed to one or two kinds of garlic carried at local grocery stores or farmers markets. However, there are said to be over 600 cultivated sub-varieties of garlic in the world which all differ in size, color, shape, taste, number of cloves per bulb, pungency, and stability. Check out Gourmet Garlic Gardens for a large listing of garlic varieties and other info about garlic.

In addition to only being exposed to limited varieties of garlic, you're probably only used to eating garlic bulbs, when in fact the leaves and flowers are also edible. Immature flower stalks (scapes) can also be eaten and are sometimes marketed for uses similar to asparagus in stir-fries. Immature plants resemble scallions before the bulb forms and can also be eaten.

Garlic - Culinary
When recipes call for garlic, it's usually listed in the ingredients list as so many cloves of garlic. A clove is the individual segment. A head of garlic is the whole bulb.

Sometimes the recipe will tell you to use a garlic press, mince/smash/slice, or just toss it in. But why does it matter? Let's talk about the chemistry at play.

The aroma of fresh garlic is created when the enzyme alliinase changes the sulfur compound alliin into allicin. Alliinase and alliin are contained in separate garlic cells. They are released when the cells are broken (cutting,  mincing, smashing, etc). Allicin is the chemical compound that is primarily responsible for the "hot" sensation of raw garlic. The process of cooking garlic removes allicin, thus mellowing its spiciness.

With that in mind, I tend to use garlic as a spice to add flavor to my food. I don't like eating garlic for the sake of eating it. Thus, in order to maximize the garlic flavor, I recommend using a mortar and pestle (or go Hulk) to completely pulverize the cells and help the crucial chemical reaction between aliinase and alliin take place.

To flavor!
Jack

Seeds - Weight of the Matter

The indoor target archery season is coming to an end and I'm starting my preparations to shoot outdoors. There are two more weeks of leagues and the MSAA State Indoor shoot is coming up. I'm happy it's almost over because I'm pretty burnt out shooting. Unlike last season, this year I shot through the summer instead of taking a break between seasons. I'd be sad if one of my favorite forms of recreation turned burdensome. 

I'm also looking forward to my friends getting married this summer! I don't know much about getting married except it involves a lot of resources to express eternal commitment. Shopping for rings sounds as exciting as it sounds terrifying. My friends have thoroughly educated me on the 4Cs, "Cut, Color, Clarity, and Carat". 

How do archery and jewelry relate to food? Their units of measurement, grains and carats respectively, are derived from the weight of seeds! It is said that the reason for tying measurements of mass to seeds was a belief that seeds had very low variability in mass. It was also useful because anyone could go grab their own set of seeds to compare. Now, both grains and carats are generally standard units of mass around the world, with some variation in countries that do not recognize those units of measurement.

A grain is a unit of measurement of mass that is nominally based upon the mass of a single seed of a cereal. There are 7000 grains in a pound. Grains are the standard unit of measurement for arrows as well as bullets, gun propellants, water hardness, and some other things.

A carat is a unit of measurement of mass that is nominally based upon the mass of a single carob seed. One carat has a mass equal to 200 mg. Carats are used to weigh gemstones and pearls.

The more you know!

Jack

Fork To Fork

Hello Friends,

Whenever you set out to do something, it's important to know the how, what, why...etc. In business, people like to refer to it as setting you Mission, Vision, and Values. Here's what you can expect from this blog.

This blog is primarily dedicated to food and everything about food from (pitch) Fork to (table) Fork. To give due credit where it's due, I snagged "Fork to Fork" from one of my favorite British TV series about organic farming. You can watch the 6 episode Fork to Fork series on YouTube. 

I hope to bring you simple yet interesting tidbits about food across a myriad of subject matters to enrich your heart, hearth, and home. I may even toss in some pithy wisdom to boot. 

As with all things, I highly suggest you take everything on this blog with a boulder of salt (figuratively speaking, not the high blood pressure kind of skepticism). The list of professional things I am not far exceeds the professional experience I have. Regardless of what your education is or mine, one thing I hold firm to is that truth is simple.

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." -Leonardo Da Vinci

Let's have a splendid good time!
Jack

Accountant To Farmer

I'm officially starting work at Ploughshare Farms in Alexandria, MN on April 15, 2013. I'll be moving to Alexandria and living there through end of October to grow veggies for their CSA. Consequently, the last month has been extremely busy getting everything in order and getting ready to move. There never seems to be an end to the number of "adult" things I need to take care of. 

The reactions to my move have been mixed. I've gotten a lot of "what will you do after?". To be honest, I don't know. Maybe I'll do all the things I've always wanted to do since I won't be responsible for a "career". Maybe I'll go back to office work and wish I'd never left. Federal Government doesn't seem to be doing too hot right now. So, I'm basically helping them fix their budget by cutting down on their payroll, right? Right now I'm a blender of doubts and aspirations on turbo speed, but I know everything will work out.

As they say, "If you don't build your dreams, someone will hire you to help build theirs." - Tony Gaskins

Cheers to new beginnings!