Last week I found a recipe on my Facebook feed for flour-free white sugar-free Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies. Today I had some free time so I thought I’d try it out. The thing that fascinates me about this recipe is that you use chickpeas instead of flour, eggs or butter. You get a significant amount of oil from the peanut butter and you use honey instead of white sugar.
I think the original recipe comes from Texan Erin’s website and you can check it out here. Her website has a lot of good recipes and good photos, too. I really recommend checking out her recipe. I’d rather see her get the link love so if you are curious, please give her a click. I don’t want to infringe on her hard work.
So my review of the recipe:
Making It Up:
I had about 20 extra chickpeas than the recipe called for. I have no use for 20 solitary chickpeas so I increased the recipe a bit. I know one can put chickpeas in salad but I don’t like that.
The chickpeas were a bit hard to get completely smooth. If I make this again, I will blend the chickpeas and honey first instead of adding all the ingredients at first. I have a Braun immersion blender and I can get perfectly smooth hummus but this recipe is a bit “dryer” so it was harder on my machine.
Baking:
I hate my little oven. It is one of those smallish microwave/regular oven deals and it has very uneven heat. The corner cookies were not cooked. Not a problem with the recipe, just something to think about. My oven also doesn’t have 175C so I improvised. It turns out that a solid bake of 180 C for 10-11 minutes works better. It might be better to bake for longer.
The cookies end up being very doughy. The chocolate was nicely baked so that was good. I didn’t end up feeling like it never cooked at all.
TIP: I think it is important to press the middle down so the cookie centre cooks. This might not be important if you have a decent oven, but if you dont, mush it.
Yield: The recipe said about 14, but I got 17. Thank you extra chickpeas.
Taste:
Does it taste chickpea-y? Not so much. I suspect this recipe would not make a decent plain chocolate chip cookie. The peanut butter camouflages the chickpea taste pretty effectively. Unlike a lot of gluten free I’ve tried (not a lot, granted) it wasn’t dry as a bone, but quite moist.
I prefer a bit dryer cookie, but they were still warm when I ate a couple.
Final:
I think it is a good recipe. For a “healthy” cookie and one that is gluten free, I rate it quite highly. The ingredients are easy to buy, the recipe isn’t too hard to make and it tastes pretty good.
The Spendy Pencil 