Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Chickpea Cookies


This is a modified recipe of the Sneaky Chickpea Mounds from Just Call Me Marta. Because cooking is all about learning new techniques, I just had to make this once so I could get a feel for what it was like to use pureed chickpeas in a cookie batter, and hopefully I'll be able to apply this technique on some other recipe one day - probably in some round of Paper Chef when we have some impossible combination of ingredients.

Without chocolate, these cookies taste like something you've bought at the health food shop. With chocolate...well, they taste much better.

If I were to make this again, I think I might replace the whole wheat flour with corn meal to give the cookies some crunch. I don't know if this is how they were meant to turn out since I didn't have quinoa flour and replaced this with AP flour, but mine were as soft as cake.

In either case, it's an interesting idea on how you can feed your children pureed chickpeas without them knowing it. Sneaky, eh?

Marta's Sneaky Chickpea Mounds (Modified Version)

Makes 47 Cookies

Ingredients

400 g Cooked Chickpeas

1 egg

1/4 Cup Brown Sugar

1/3 Cup + 2 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/2 C Whole Wheat Flour

1 1/4 Cup AP Flour*

1 Tsp Cinnamon

1 Tsp Coarse Sea Salt

*Original recipe uses Quinoa flour.

Step 1: Preheat oven to 176C/350F.

Step 2: Process the chickpeas, egg, sugar and olive oil in a food processor until creamy and smooth.

Step 3: Mix this with the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Don't be afraid to use your hands and knead until it's this nice smooth ball.

Step 4: Roll into logs and cut them and reshape them a bit so they are round.

Step 5: They won't spread out much so you can let them sit pretty close to each other. Bake for around 10 minutes.

Step 6: Let the cookies cool down and then dip them in melted chocolate. Feed them to your kids!

Note: I've been told that cardamom, saffron and rose water nicely complement cookies made with chickpea flour so it might be a great idea to use with pureed chickpeas as well.

7 comments:

Justin said...

i had no idea you could use chickpeas in baking... interesting

Ilva said...

I like this way of using chickpeas, must try it!

taste traveller said...

I've been looking for a way to use chickpeas in baking - thanks!

Marta said...

Great rendition!!!! I like the changes you have made and the suggestion of corn flour, I think it may add a nice texture to these! Thanks for trying them :)
You're totally right, without the chocolate they are your classic "health food store" cookie, that's why I give them a generous dip ;) But, truth is, they are healthy cookies and, of course, they're never going to taste as decadent as tripple chocolate chip cookies or something! Yay! I'm so happy you tried these :)

Murasaki Shikibu said...

Justin: Neither did I. I've seen chickpea flour being used but didn't know about pureed chickpeas.

Ilva: I'm sure you'll come-up with something utterly delicious with this.

Taste Traveller: I'm gonna be experimenting with this too. ;)

Marta: And thank you for posting your recipe. I guess a lot of us made a new discovery! :)

Lori said...

I bet cornmeal in them would be good. I once baked white beans in a muffin and loved it. The recipe was on fragant delicea. I have used black beans in brownies too. Now I need to make chickpea cookies.

Murasaki Shikibu said...

Lori: What was the ratio between black beans and flour? I'm a baking noob so still afraid to experiment without some veteran giving me the ratios. ;)