About the Recipe
p.184 Battered: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery
He handed Alene one of his little blue towels and she looked at him closely. Both Dennis and Gary had trained with him. He was strong enough to murder someone with his bare hands. “Where were you last night, by the way?”
He smiled. “I thought we’d resolved this, Alene. Are you asking because of your prodigious investigative skills, or has someone hired you as a private eye? Does this mean you suspect me – again?” He rolled his head, as if in agony, and then pointed to the calendar above his desk near the door. “My mother’s birthday is celebrated every year on that very date, the twenty-second of June. Didn’t I tell you I was going to be at my Aunt Ivy’s for a barbeque dinner at which I ate purely protein with no extraneous carbohydrates and merely a sniff of the watermelon and the chocolate cake?”
Alene realized she’d been holding herself tightly. She plopped down on the mat and smiled up at Michael. “Sorry.”
“But thanks for your thoroughness in checking up on me, Sherlock,” he added.
Ingredients
1 15.5 ounce can of chickpeas, drained
4 eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
½ tsp chocolate extract (optional, but worthwhile)
3/4 cup sugar
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp cinnamon (up to 1 tsp if you love cinnamon)
1 TBSP instant decaf coffee or espresso
1 1/3 cups or 9 oz bag of semisweet chocolate chips
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 350. Spray a 9-inch round cake pan or a muffin tray
Process beans, eggs, and extracts until smooth.
Process in sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and coffee powder
Pour in chocolate chips and process about 30 seconds.
Pour batter into prepared cake pan.
Bake for 35-40 minutes in the preheated oven (15-18 for muffins), or until a knife inserted into the center of cake comes out clean.
Cool in the pan before inverting onto a serving plate.
Dust with confectioners’ sugar, or whip up a rich chocolate frosting