Gooey Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies [Chickpea Cookies - Gluten / Grain Free]

Want to know the hardest part about food blogging? Let me start by telling you it's not the taste testing or the trying of new recipes or anything having to do with eating. But rather it's the planning when you can eat that tasty treat you just made. You see, cooking - specifically baking - urges hit me at the strangest times. Like when I'm three beers deep on a Saturday night during a The Following marathon and it may or may not be close to midnight.  

I mean, who doesn't crave some gooey delicious grain free chocolate peanut butter cookies made with chickpeas (or are they garbanzo beans!?) at midnight when mildly drunk and watching a show about a creepy murderer? In my mind midnight cookies are always a good thing. But... because you obviously need the most perfect wonderful photos of the most photogenic cookie (yeah, the one you just shoved into your drunk pie hole), cookies at midnight aren't always the best idea when it comes to food blogging. 

But I just had to share this recipe with you, like now. You will be shocked, like shocked your socks off kind of shocked, that these cookies contain chickpeas, no flour, no butter, and no refined sugar. They are the perfect healthy treat for when you craving something gooey, soft, and cookie dough like. Which brings me back to my original point. I wanted to show you the gooey delightfulness, but I had to wait for the sun to come back out. Damn sleeping sun. And by then my chocolate wasn't all melty and I had eaten over half the cookies. Yes, the most photogenic ones - they taste the best you know. So I tried to solve the problem by giving them a quick little jaunt in the microwave (please microwave haters cut me a break!) turns out the microwave dried them out and I couldn't get my gooey look (you win microwave haters, you win). 

So you only have one option. You must make these in order to fully understand the delicious soft gooey goodness that is chickpea cookies. 

Gooey Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Chickpea Cookies 

Makes about 16 - 18

adapted from Texanerin Baking 

(PRINTABLE)

1 - 15 oz can chickpeas (garbanzo beans) - should be 1 1/2 cups chickpeas. 

1/2 cup natural peanut butter or any other nut butter

1/4 cup maple syrup (I used Grade B Pure Maple Syrup)

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons vanilla

a pinch of salt 

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Pre-heat oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with a silicon baking mat or parchment paper. 

Drain and rinse your chickpeas. At this point I like to squeeze each chickpea between my fingers to remove the clear "skin" that is on them. It is simple to do but adds an extra 5 to 10 minutes of time. It is completely optional, but I find that taking the skins off makes the batter smoother. This left me with 1 1/2 cups of chickpeas. This is the amount you need. 

In a food processor or blender (I tried this in my mini food processor once and it was just too much for it to handle, so use a regular food processor or powerful blender) combine the chickpeas, peanut butter, maple syrup, baking powder, vanilla, and salt. Blend until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed. 

Either pulse in your chocolate chips or fold them into the batter. Using slightly damp hands (this helps to keep the batter from sticking) roll batter into ping pong to golf ball sized balls. Try to keep the sizing consistent. Place on your baking sheet. You can squish them down a little bit if you want flatter cookies or keep them as balls. Bake for 10 minutes. They will get a little golden color, but you don't want to overbake them so you aren't looking for a deep golden color. You want them to be moist and gooey. 

Enjoy warm or at room temperature! Store in an airtight container on your counter.