Black Bean Cakes

Black beans are one of our favorite foods. They allow us to consume enough protein in a meal and yet they provide for vegetarian meals. In addition, since we tend to incorporate them in vegetarian meals, it helps us keep our per-plate cost low. We buy bags of black beans and rehydrate them, which keeps the cost down.

So when we found this recipe for Black Bean Cakes at Taste of Home's Light & Tasty, we were eager to try it.

This recipe also was pretty simple, if the beans are the correct consistency. To start with, you need to mash the beans in a large bowl. Our beans were not cooked enough when I tried this step and we had to cook them a bit more before mashing was easy.

After that, add egg whites, green onions, cilantro, chili powder, oregano and cumin. Shape the mixture into patties and fry in a skillet coated with cooking spray and oil.


In a separate bowl, combine half salsa and half corn.


When the black bean cakes are done frying, top them with some of the salsa-corn mixture and also with sour cream.

We thought this recipe was good, but we think it would be better with our meddling. The cakes were actually on the flavorless side. We think that's because the recipe calls for canned black beans (which would have salt added) and we used rehydrated bagged beans (which we didn't add salt to). Also, there's other flavorings we would have included, pepper namely. So the recipe turned out to be a good building block from which we will try this recipe again sometime -- our way.