Chocolate Chip Chickpea Cookies

Chocolate chip cookies made of CHICKPEAS! With the same sweet & buttery cookie flavor we all know and love, I promise that you’ll never guess that they’re made with these healthy little beans…

A Healthier Cookie Recipe!

Making healthier dessert recipes is a favorite hobby of mine. I never feel gross after eating these cookies & they have enough protein and fiber to be super energizing… in other words, I don’t think twice about grabbing one or two for a quick breakfast LOL. That’s not a daily routine of mine, but hard college semesters call for drastic measures sometimes, you know?!

I also made sure to steer clear of using any refined, highly processed sugar sources for these chickpea cookies. By sticking to honey as the only sweetener, these healthier cookies are made with natural ingredients that our bodies know what to do with. The adjective “healthier” seems to mean something different for everyone these days, but I believe that it simply means eating naturally.

Whatever natural, whole foods make you feel like your best self fit in the “healthier” category. Personally, since being diagnosed with IBD, I choose to stick to the foods on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD). These include fruits, most veggies, nuts, dry cheeses, meats, and a few beans and legumes.

• Link: SCD Legal/Illegal List

Even though chickpeas aren’t considered to be “legal” on the SCD, they’ve been one of the foods I’ve been able to add back in as long as I don’t have any IBD symptoms!

How to Bake with Chickpeas:

Chickpeas have very quickly become one of my favorite healthy ingredients to sneak into sweets recently! The beans themselves have a neutral flavor that easily takes on the flavors of the other ingredients in a recipe. To make chickpeas even sweeter (pun intended), chickpea flour has a slightly sweet flavor that lends itself super well to baked desserts.

Case in point being these chocolate chip cookies!

Chickpea flour is a flour that you can use on its own, which is hard to come by with a few other grain-free flour substitutes. However, since chickpea flour has more fiber than traditional flour (or even almond flour), it soaks up more liquid than lower-fiber flours and results in a denser texture. Some key properties of this flour to keep in mind include:

1. Chickpea flour soaks up liquid more than regular flour (very similar to coconut flour), which results in a perfectly moist baked product.
2. It’s gluten-free, so it won’t rise as much as regular flour.
3. This flour is a great binder due to it’s high resistant starch content- great for creating baked goods that need a tender yet dense & sturdy texture (i.e. cookies, brownies/blondies, banana bread, pancakes, muffins).
4. It has a slightly sweet aftertaste and has a similar texture to that of almond flour. Definitely make sure to buy extra finely ground flour for the best results!

Some Studies/References:

• Ahmed and others, 2014
• Kitchler, 2019
• “Why You Should Buy a Bag of Wheat Flour” – Epicurious, 2019

& my personal thoughts/experiences with chickpea flour!

In summary, I’m a fan. Since I’ve started following a grain-free, gluten-free diet, I always make sure to have a bag of chickpea flour on hand.

Chickpea Health Benefits:

GUYS. Chickpeas are the coolest.

Since I’ve started doing more research on what I want my thesis research to consist of as I pursue my Master’s degree in Food Science, I’ve become the biggest resistant starch geek. I won’t go into details here, but in short resistant starch (aka indigestible fiber found in several plant foods) feeds the beneficial species of bacteria in your gut. These types of bacteria produce metabolites that support a healthy metabolism, weight regulation, reduce inflammation, and have even been shown to have positive effects on mood! This type of fiber is considered to be a “prebiotic”, which is any type of fermentable polysaccharide that these probiotics (beneficial bacteria in your colon) can use as food.

Legumes and lentils (aka “pulses”) are also known to be staples in “Blue Zones”. The term “Blue Zones” was coined by Dan Buettner through his books and was very quickly picked up by the National Geographic. Blue Zones refers to five special communities around the world in which people live the longest.

A common dietary thread- among several other lifestyle factors of longevity- between these 5 communities is a high consumption of pulses! Some of my favorite pulses that I eat frequently include chickpeas, black beans, and lentils. It’s especially easy now within the past 5- 10 years as pasta alternatives made with these beans and legumes are very common in American grocery stores!

Link: “History of Blue Zones”

Link: “The World’s #1 Longevity Food”

What You’ll Need:

How to Make Chickpea Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Step 1: Combine all of the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl and beat well until a thick cookie dough forms. Stir in mini paleo chocolate chips.

Step 2: Scoop out the dough with a cookie scooper (about 2 tablespoons of dough). Roll each ball lightly between the palms of your hands to smooth the edges; flatten slightly as these cookies tend to mostly retain their shape as they bake.

Step 3: Bake, let cool, and enjoy!

To store the chickpea cookies, place in an air-tight container and either refrigerate or freeze to keep fresh! But we all know cookies are best warm out of the oven… (;

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