Since I am now a very complicated eater, meaning I cannot eat a lot of the everyday foods like dairy, eggs, or gluten, I have become a bit more experimental in cooking and baking. Creating the luxuries like cakes and biscuits using wholefood ingredients has had some pretty surprising results. After all, I will not let these intolerances stop me from having an indulgent pudding/snack every now and then. Behold the vegan and gluten-free peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie bars! These wonderful, cakey delights are made with chickpeas- not your average pudding ingredient some would say. The outcome of these cookie bars has a gooey texture that makes you wonder whether you are actually eating chickpeas as a sweet snack. Yes, it is true. Chickpeas have provided something quite revolutionary in the healthy cooking world.
I found this recipe on Pinterest (my favourite website ever) but I have adapted it to make it a little better (sorry original recipe). It uses only a few ingredients and are so easy to make that I read over the recipe twice before I put it in the oven just to make sure that I did everything. It only took 5 minutes! All you need is:
1x can of 400g chickpeas
1/2 cup of peanut butter
3/4 cup of maple syrup
tsp of baking powder
tsp of vanilla essence
2oz of gluten-free flour
1/2 cup of dark chocolate buttons
(sunflower margarine for greasing)
And all you need to do is:
1. Pre-heat your oven to 180 celsius
2. Blend everything together (minus the chocolate buttons) with a hand blender (or food processor) until it is lovely and smooth
3. Stir in the buttons to give it some chocolate lovin'
4. Put it in a fairly deep baking tray and sprinkle some more chocolate buttons on top so it looks delightful when it comes out of the oven
5. Bake for 12-15 minutes
6. When the knife comes out clean, it is ready! Allow it to cool for 30 minutes before cutting it into squares
What I love about this recipe (besides the taste), is that it is so simple and does not use ingredients that are expensive, which is common in healthy, vegan recipes. Being a student, my bank account would not allow it but 80p for a can of chickpeas is more like it!
These cookie bars are perfect for a snack or warm with some ice cream (my favourite is Booja Booja). Now that my first batch has run out, I think it's time to make some more mmm...
