Recipe: Chickpea Cookies
For the past year or two both Elizabeth and I have been buying a lot of our food through Nousrire, a bulk buying group that specializes in organic foods. My boyfriend and I usually place an order once every two months, and then a few weeks later we head over to Mile End to pack everything up in our own containers and bring it home to stock our pantry.
Between our Nousrire orders and getting a Lufa farms box delivered to a local pickup point every week for our produce and other fresh foods, we've been going to the grocery store less and less lately. There are a few reasons that these alternatives have been working well for us. Partly it's the convenience, but we're also getting good prices for organic and local foods, as well as reducing our food-packaging waste. Another benefit is that we're buying a lot of healthy foods, so we're snacking on nuts and dried fruit rather than processed snack foods.
Sometimes though, it's nice to have a bit of a treat. Since our Nousrire orders have included lots of dried chickpeas lately, as well as chocolate chips, peanut butter and the aforementioned fruit and nuts, we pretty much always have the ingredients for these cookies at hand. I like this recipe because it's relatively low in sugar, has the added protein from the chickpeas and nut butter, and is quick and easy to throw together (it's also gluten-free if that's important for you). I often make a double batch and freeze half - mostly to keep us from eating them all at once!
Chickpea Cookies
- 1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas (or 1 average-sized can)
- 1/3 cup peanut or almond butter
- 1/4 cup maple syrup or honey
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- extras: chocolate chips, raisins, nuts, etc
- butter or oil for greasing
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350˚F and grease a large baking sheet (or line with parchment paper if you prefer).
- Mix everything except the extras in a food processor until smooth. It will be quite a bit softer than a normal flour-based cookie dough.
- Stir in your extras (I find it easier to transfer everything to a bowl for this step).
- Place spoonfuls of dough onto prepared baking sheet.
- Bake for 25 minutes, or until browned. The cookies should still be somewhat soft in the centre.
- Enjoy! These cookies don't last long around our place, but if you're going to keep them for more than a day or two store them in the fridge or freezer.
Makes 12-16 cookies, depending on how many extras you throw in!
Debbie Sullivan
Author