Peanut Butter Chickpea Cake (gluten-free)

This peanut butter cake is fudgy, decadent, and completely gluten-free! I promise that no one will guess it’s flourless and made with a whole can of chickpeas. It’s incredibly easy to make entirely in a blender with simple pantry ingredients like eggs, sugar, oil and peanut butter.

This black bean chocolate cake is one of the most popular recipes on my site, and people have been requesting another version. So after many rounds of testing, I’m happy to share this gluten-free peanut butter cake made with chickpeas!

There are a lot of chickpea peanut butter blondie recipes out there, but I wanted a texture that was fluffy and cakey rather than dense and bean-y. The trick ended up being a little more cornstarch, baking powder and sugar that transforms the beans into a fluffy cake texture. It’s perfect paired with a chocolate Greek yogurt frosting!

How I developed this recipe

Using the black bean chocolate cake as my guide, I first tested a version that simply removed the cocoa powder and added some peanut butter. This led to a texture that reminded me of a dense, underbaked chickpea blondie. It tasted good, but the structure and texture wasn’t right.

For the second test, I added some cornstarch to mimic the effect that the cocoa powder had in the chocolate cake along with a pinch of salt. I tested this batter as muffins and they turned out really well! I thought I had cracked the code in just two tests, woo.

I decided to do a third test when I was back in NYC instead of my parent’s kitchen, and in this test, I added a little more peanut butter and tested half the batter with natural peanut butter (Trader Joe’s) and half with Jif. I was surprised to find I preferred the natural peanut butter test (more peanut flavor and not as artificially sweet), but the texture felt a bit too gummy baked as a cake round rather than as muffins.

For the fourth test, I couldn’t stop wondering what would happen if I tried using powdered PB instead of cornstarch in the batter. Answer: a super dense, not very sweet, somehow too peanut-y (in a bitter way) cake that I didn’t even take a picture of.

For my fifth and final test, I reverted back to my original ratios from Test #2 but increased the sugar, cornstarch and baking powder slightly. Thankfully, I was finally satisfied with the crumb. Like the chocolate cake, the texture is like a fluffy, slightly spongy cake rather than a dense bean concoction.

Ingredients

You just need a few simple ingredients to make this cake!

• Chickpeas: Also known as garbanzo beans, these are the main ingredient that provide the structure usually provided by flour in a cake. You can use canned chickpeas or beans that you’ve cooked from dry (you’ll need a total of 1 and 3/4 cups of cooked beans or around 300g).
• Natural peanut butter: Using a smooth natural peanut butter is my preference for this recipe. I tested it with a processed peanut butter and the texture felt a bit drier and the flavor leaned a bit too sweet and less peanut-y. I used salted natural peanut butter (Trader Joe’s brand), but unsalted also works fine–you can just add an extra pinch of salt.
• Granulated sugar: I highly recommend using the amount specified in the recipe (if you want to reduce the amount, do so with caution that the results may not be quite as good). In addition to sweetness, sugar adds tenderness to the cake texture. I haven’t tested this with alternative sweeteners like maple syrup or honey, but please report back if you give it a try!
• Olive oil, neutral oil, melted butter, or refined coconut oil: Any type of oil will work in this cake–a neutral oil is best, but I’ve also used a mildly flavored olive oil which also worked well.
• Cornstarch: This is what helps add body and a fluffy texture to the cake (it serves the same purpose as cocoa powder in the black bean cake, minus the flavoring).

How to make this peanut butter chickpea cake

This gluten-free peanut butter cake is super easy to make. Just add all your ingredients to a blender or food processor, blend and bake!

Step 3: Frost with the frosting of your choice. Let cake cool in their pans for 5 minutes before turning out to cool completely. Frost and enjoy! For this cake, I used a chocolate Greek yogurt frosting similar to this King Arthur frosting.

What does flourless peanut butter chickpea cake taste like?

My goal was to make a fluffy peanut butter cake that tasted similar to a regular peanut butter cake. This has a fluffy texture that crumbles slightly with a fairly subtle peanut butter flavor. I promise you won’t taste the beans at all!

Make ahead and storage

You can make this cake a few days ahead of time and store in the fridge, wrapped well, for 2-3 days before serving. I recommend bringing it to room temperature at least an hour or two before frosting and serving.

You can store leftover slices of cake in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week. You can also wrap individual frosted slices in plastic wrap, slip into a freezer bag and freeze for up to 1 month.

If you loved this cake, I highly recommend trying my black bean chocolate cake next!