Lemon Bean Cake

We have been to the dietician to help get us on track for my husband's impaired glucose tolerance (pre-diabetic).  Our diet in comparison to most is quite healthy because of cooking from scratch, home canning and avoiding things like HFCS, excess salt, artificial additives and preservatives.  The dietician was quite impressed since this makes her job a bit easier as we are both open to any recommended dietary modification.  There is a wealth of information there including recipe booklets.  I've been working on getting more beans into our diet so I picked up The Supreme Bean by the Ontario Bean Producers recipe booklet.  It has a lot of interesting recipes.

Beans are a very healthy choice as they are gluten-free, high fiber, low cholesterol and they act as an appetite suppressant.  Beans are digested slowly causing a low, sustained increase in blood sugar.  I was surprised to learn that beans and bean flour can be used to make healthy, gluten free desserts and muffins as well. 

I made the lemon bean cake in the recipe booklet.  I omitted the fresh fruit sauce for the cake, choosing to simply garnish with icing sugar, lemon peel curls and strawberries.  The cake is made with well-cooked white pea beans.  Note the well-cooked as I don't think I cooked mine long enough so the texture was slightly grainy.  My husband didn't like the texture so next time I will cook the beans until they are quite mushy.  The flavour was very good so with a bit of tweaking this will be a lovely cake to add to my gluten free recipes!

Lemon Bean Cake
modified from: The Supreme Bean by the Ontario Bean Producers recipe booklet.

1 lemon (zest, ¼ c juice)
2 c well cooked white pea beans
3 eggs
1 c organic granulated sugar
1 tsp baking powder
icing sugar

Pre-heat oven.  Wash then zest the lemon setting aside.  Juice the lemon and set aside.  Place drained beans in food processor.  Add all but ½ tsp of the zest (reserve for garnish) and juice.  Process until smooth.  Add eggs, sugar and baking powder.  Process until ingredients are well mixed.  Pour into prepared 9" - round cake pan.  Bake at 180ºC (350ºFº) for 45 minutes or until the centre tests clean with toothpick.  Cool then invert onto serving plate.  Dust with icing sugar.  Garnish with fresh fruit and remaining lemon zest.

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