Anyone who knows me well, knows that I’m not out-of-place in the kitchen. I’m pretty good at throwing a few random ingredients together and producing something that some might even call tasty. Even more, I love entertaining and feeding the people I love. The buck stops at baking though. I just don’t have the discipline required for measuring out the exact amounts necessary for baking. So when I came across this recipe, the pictures looked INCREDIBLE and I just thought, I have to do that. It’s not like I can go down to the corner store (we don’t even have a corner store) and pick up some chickpea cookies. Also, they turned out pretty well so I figure why not blog about it.

Confession: I never intended to have a “recipes” side to my blog but hey, I’m just winging it anyway.

So I decided to do this a few weeks back and sent my husband out to buy all the ingredients (yes, he does the shopping, apparently I spend too much money and buy too much stuff we don’t need – I stand by needing that third slab of chocolate). However, as is natural for someone who hates baking, I didn’t “feel” like making them until yesterday after watching a really depressing moving (side note, don’t watch If I stay it is REALLY sad and depressing) and needed to get myself out of the downer mood it had put me in. What better way than fresh homemade cookies right.

So, I went to the kitchen and got out the ingredients, no peanut butter, not to worry, I’ve got peanuts.. I’ll just make my own.

Which I did (using this recipe) without peanut oil which apparently you need, I just used olive oil instead. Turned out seemingly okay. I also didn’t have enough honey so mine were probably less sweet than yours would be if you used the exact ingredients. I basically used the recipe as a guideline and made my own version.

I blended everything from the chick peas, to the peanuts with a hand-held blender because that’s all I have and I baked mine for closer to 20 minutes because I wanted them to be nice and crispy on the outside. I also used a fork to press them down flat into the “cookie” shape but you can just leave them as balls if you prefer.

The cookies are VERY gooey when they come out the oven but set after they cool down. I didn’t like them when warm and thought the cooled down version tasted much better. This recipe is literally fool-proof, I would just not recommend using very oily peanut butter because I can’t imagine them tasting all that great oily.

Be warned though, the mixture is really sticky and gooey and you need to re-wet your hands several times while rolling out the balls of it onto your baking tray but when they’re in the oven baking they just look (and smell) so incredible. 

Taking them out was literally the highlight of my day

Well, until tasting them of course ;P Yummmmmmy!!  They don’t taste like normal cookies so don’t expect them to. Let me know if you make them what you think?

The Recipe

What you need

• 1¼ cups canned chickpeas, well-rinsed and patted dry with a paper towel
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ½ cup + 2 tablespoons (165 grams) of natural peanut butter
• ¼ cup (80 grams) honey
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• a pinch of salt if your peanut butter doesn’t have salt in it
• ½ cup (90 grams) chocolate chips

What you need to do

1. Reheat your oven to 350°F / 175°C. Combine all the ingredients, except for the chocolate chips, in a food processor and process until very smooth. Make sure to scrape the sides and the top to get the little chunks of chickpeas and process again until they’re combined.
2. Put in the chocolate chips and stir it if you can, or pulse it once or twice. The mixture will be very thick and sticky.
3. With wet hands, form into 1½” balls. Place onto a piece of parchment paper on a baking tray (I used foil b because that’s all I had). If you want them to look more like normal cookies, press down slightly on the balls using a fork or your hands. They don’t do much rising.
4. Bake for about 10 minutes (or 20 minutes if you’re me). The dough balls will still be very soft when you take them out of the oven. They will not set like normal cookies but they do harden a bit.
5. Store in an airtight container at room temperature (or in the fridge) for up to 1 week.

and enjoy….