Chocolate Protein Birthday Cake

The ingredient challenge this week was black beans so I decided to work on my baking skills. I’ve never been the best at baking with protein powder, and I gave up for some time because it gets quite expensive if you have to continually throw away batches and batches of food. But I decided it was time to experiment again. I started by purchasing Zach Rocheleau’s book, Flexible Dieting Lifestyle Book of Recipes 5.0, because he seemed to have it down. And I’m so glad I did because I’m learning a lot just by trying more and more of his recipes and getting a better understanding of how to bake with it. One of the most important things I learned is that I was using the wrong type of protein. For years and years, I was using whey protein, but nothing ever tasted that good. Zach uses a whey+casein blend and it just bakes SO much better. He recommends the SELECT Protein from PEScience, so that’s what I bought, and I will continue to bake with it because it hasn’t let me down.

Chocolate Protein Birthday Cake
Prep 15 min
Cooking 20-25 min
Servings 16

INGREDIENTS

For the cake:

• 200g canned black beans

• 100ml unsweetened almond milk

• 80g mashed sweet potato (I just used some baked sweet potatoes I had, you’ll puree them in a food processor later. Canned pumpkin works too)

• 80g unsweetened apple sauce

• 28g light butter (I used I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spread, not the spray)

• 2 eggs

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 2 scoops (62g) PEScience SELECT Protein (I used the Gourmet Vanilla flavor)

• 30g cocoa powder

• 20g gluten-free baking flour

• 4g baking soda

• 2 1/2 tbsp stevia in the raw (about 4g)

• Pinch of salt

• 60g mini chocolate chips

For the frosting:

• 2 scoops (62g) PEScience SELECT Protein (I used the Gourmet Vanilla flavor)

• 60g nonfat Greek yogurt

• 8 tbsp stevia in the raw (about 12g)

• 40ml water

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

For the topping:

• 15g rainbow sprinkles