STEEMIT IRON CHEF 2018 Act 02 Round 04 ~ Chocolate-Summerberries-Cake

Berries is the perfect theme for this week's @steemit-ironchef food competition. All the berries are in season right now over here in Germany. It's wonderful! It's like a berry paradise!

I am not very experienced in plantbased baking because everytime I made some muffins, cupcakes or a cake I had to eat it all myself because the hubby has not such a sweet tooth. And I have to admit that some of my experiments didn't turn out so - uhm - nice. But this time I had to make it ...

You can't go wrong with a brownie dough. So I decided that the base would be a brownie. Mine is a grainfree, dairyfree, egg free, refined sugar free (but the sugar in the chocolate) but incredibly chocolicious triple chocolate brownie, soft and moist and yummy.

These are the ingredients for the brownie:

• a can of cooked beans - I took white beans - drained (keep the liquid, the aquafaba to make a vegan chocolate mousse, vegan meringue ... I freeze it if I don't need it instantly) All sort of beans work well. You can use kidney or black beans or whatever sort is available.
• 150g pitted dates, soaked in 250ml hot water
• 80g coconut oil, molten 
• 40g cacao powder 
• 100g dark chocolate, molten
• 200g of a nut or seeds flour (I mixed finely shredded almonds, sunflower see and flaxseed flour)
• 2 tablespoons of chia seeds 
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder 
• 1 tea of baking soda
• some oats milk (max. 100 ml - I decided how much after I mixed all the other ingredients together how much extra liquid the dough needed
• a dash of salt
• 80g of chocolate drops  

If you just want to make some nice brownies, this  is delicious just as it is or you can top it with nuts and seeds, cherries or berries before or after baking. Everything is possible.

Preparations:

I mixed the dry ingredients (but the chocolate drops) in a large bowl.

I shredded the soaked dates and the drained beans in my food processor until nice and smooth. Then I mixed in the molten chocolate and coconut oil.

I fold the wet ingredients into the dry mixture until all dry ingredients where moist. I filled the dough into a baking dish that I covered with baking paper before. 

There was way too much dough, so I made some extra mini-brownies in a muffin dish. At that moment I realized the surviving sweet potato on the table that was meant to be shredded in the dough for an extra amount of healthy bla bla veggies. At least that was the idea. 😝 Now it had to go without it ... 

I baked the brownie base for thirty minutes in the preheated oven (180 degrees Celsius). I let it cool down over night. 

For the next layer I covered the walls of the baking dish with baking paper as well.

I cooked a package vanilla pudding powder with two tablespoons of raw cane sugar and half the amount of oats milk (250ml instead of 500) as the instructions said. I mixed in 50g of coconut oil and 400g of plain coconut yoghurt (you can use any plantbased yoghurt like soy, almond or lupine).

I spread half of the filling on the dough and covered it with gooseberries. Then I covered the gooseberries with the other half of the filling and smoothed it down carefully and let it rest and cool down in the fridge for like an hour.

Inbetween I cooked some frozen blueberries to get blueberry juice. (Drained the blueberries and safed it for my breakfast next morning). I made a jelly by cooking the blueberry juice with two tablespoons of raw cane sugar and one gram (!) of agar agar. This is a powder obtained by algaes, first discovered in Japan with an gelling agent inside. I was surprised and couldn't believe how well this worked and what a perfect shiny surface it created. 😃 I think I will use this magic thing more often now ...

Until now it was work. Now came the pleasure: the decorations with fresh red currants, blackberries, blueberries, lemon balm leaves and a seasoning mix of dried berries, rose flowers and other flowers, pepper ... ...

This is how it turned out:

The hubby said he never saw a cake more beautiful (well, he's in love, you know ... 💕😉) and tried one bite and was in heaven. He didn't eat more because he still tries to reduce weight (very successfully!) but I shared the cake with his parents ...

I only ate half of the cake - in two days! 😁 I will make this again, definitely! It won't be this fancy but as delicious.

Thank you, @progressivechef for the contest and for the wonderful berry theme!