Chocolate Quinoa Cake - gluten free goodness!

Does the fact that this cake has quinoa in it, which is so good for you, make up for the fact that it still has the usual butter and sugar badness in it!? I doubt it! Do they cancel each other out perhaps, in the good and bad food world? Perhaps. Does this have any bearing on whether you should make it, or eat it? No! It is wonderful, definitely worth trying! Isn't everything worth trying, or repeat trying, in moderation....

I was so excited to make this cake, in fact I would have made it a while ago if I had enough cocoa powder but I didn't and had to wait for the grocery shop to stock up! This cake calls for 1cup of cocoa, it makes it so decadent!  It also takes a fair amount of time, so don't expect an instant chocolate craving solution here. 

The reason it takes so long is because it uses cooked quinoa, so either you happen to have 2 cups of it in the fridge ready and waiting or you have to start making it and then letting it cool! This was a real sore point for me as I wanted to whip it up fast so we could eat it! I even put the quinoa in a large dish in the fridge to speed up the cooling down process. The rest of the cake is your typical chocolate cake ingredients, minus the flour, which your quinoa is replacing. 

I was a little sceptical about the texture of this cake to be honest, with whole quinoa in it, but I was pleasantly surprised. You do blend the quinoa with the wet ingredients which helps to mush it up a bit but make no mistake, there are whole quinoa particles in there and you know it. In fact, the ones that ended up on the top of the cake actually went quite nice and crisp, like a tiny crust. It also made the cake very moist and dense, in a flakey way. When I cut it, it crumbled, but it still had body to it, if that makes sense. The recipe said to cook it in 2 pans but I made it in one large one for lack of 2 small ones, so I don't know if this had any bearing on my outcome. It was so beautifully chocolatey from all the cocoa powder without the usual over sweetness that can sometimes come hand in hand with that, just bold chocolate with the right amount of sweet to lift the flavours. 

We ate it with freshly whipped cream, it was great, we loved it. I shared some with my 'foody' neighbour whose opinion I respect and she also liked it, commenting specifically on how nice the texture was. Another Quinoa 365 recipe success!