On Monday and Tuesday I celebrated my birthday with my work colleagues.... I told you I like to drag out my birthday (which was on Friday) for as long as possible!

At the weekend I'd baked an experimental 'double chocolate banana blondie' to surprise my work colleagues with...they knew it would be healthy and vegan, I then also told them it was gluten free and sugar free....just before they took their first bite I also told them that it had an added secret ingredient...could any of them guess?

Nope......but can you guess? Go on, you should know me well by now.

Oh yes...beans! Well, actually chickpeas.

This was originally going to be a simple 'blondie sponge' based on this blondie recipe, however I realised I had no sweet potato so decided to wing it and sub this for banana and a little tofu instead, this gave the cake a lovely subtle banana kick, not overly so bananary the way a full on banana cake would be but it really complimented the chocolate layer (which I decided needed to be added for visual pizazz) and the choc chunks and nutty crumbles on the top really well.

The verdict....recipe requests, just like this time!

I should probably share my baking experiments more!

So that was Monday, but yesterday it was my turn to be surprised when I was presented with a vegan banana cake that had been ordered for me specially and had taken a while to be delivered. It was such a sweet gesture. So after lunch, we all had a slice...it tasted pretty good, although more like a tea bread as it was much dryer than my cake and the apple juice that had been used as a sweetener overpowered the banana in my opinion. The unanimous vote was that my cake was better…yay!!

Ah ha, here is me and a slice of my surprise banana cake...figured you might want to see a photo of my silly face at birthday time...a rare occurrence to see an actual photo of me on this blog!

The recipe below is for my banana cake. You could make it into a loaf, slices, muffins or a nice round sponge as I did. Options, options...feel free to get a little crazy with your toppings too.

Recipe: Double choc banana blondie

Makes one 7” round cake

Ingredients

1 medium banana
½ cup silken tofu
½ cup mashed chickpeas
1/3 cup coconut butter- melted
2 tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup agave plus ¼ tsp stevia
1 cup GF flour mix* (I used 1/3 cup each of almond meal, buckwheat flour, tapioca flour)
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
A pinch salt
½ tsp cinnamon
3 tbs cocoa powder
Handful dark chocolate chips
Handful nuts (I used hazlenuts)

*you could substitute spelt or regular flour for non GF

Method

Blend the wet ingredients in food processor until very smooth. Pour into a bowl, add dry ingredients (except cocoa, chocolate and nuts) and blend together well mixed.

Divide the mixture into two bowls and add the cocoa two one half of the mixture and mix through well.

Spoon the chocolate mixture into a greased/lined 7” round cake tin (or square tin or loaf tin) and smooth out. Spoon over the blondie layer and gently smooth across taking care not to disturb the bottom layer.

Add the choc chunks and nuts to the top. Bake in the oven at 180C for approx. 20 mins until lightly golden at the edges and a skewer comes away clean.. Allow to cool before slicing and serving.