These chocolate cookies with peanut butter are simply amazing and taste astoundingly like the real deal. You would never guess that the main ingredient are actually chickpeas. Such chewy deliciousness – with a pleasantly surprising healthified twist. Ingenious.

When it comes to cookies I personally choose the soft and chewy ones over the more firmer and crispier anytime. Soft and chewy are my association with classic American chocolate chip cookies and main reason for my fascination for them.

This recipe on chocolate chip cookies however takes the whole soft and chewy cookie game to a whole different level. Extra special bonus level you could say – that actually can please more people. There is no flour involved and no eggs making them gluten-free and vegan. Chickpeas are replacing the flour and also making the use of eggs obsolete. Chickpeas. What are the odds, right? You can use canned chickpeas that will be transformed into a dough in no time with some little help of a food processor.

Other replacements to stay en route with the health-conscious theme without any trade-offs with the delicious department include coconut oil instead of butter and natural sweetener like coconut sugar instead of regular refined sugar.

DIY chocolate bits versus chocolate chips

I always made the chocolate bits myself by cutting a piece of chocolate bar in small chunks when I baked cookies rather than using chocolate chips. Initially I did that though because of its easier availability. These days I deliberately choose homemade chocolate chunks because so I can use my favorite chocolate. Which is a dark chocolate one with 72 percent cocoa. Less sugar, for more of the real good (also as in beneficial) stuff that is cocoa.

Kenji from Serious Eats took the ‘serious’ part of their name literally (again) and did some crazy neurotic extensive chocolate chip cookie lab testing. While chocolate chips create “the most regular cookies” with even chocolate pockets, homemade chocolate chunks create “a flakier cookie with larger sections of molten chocolate”. So besides mentioned preference and texture you also have more control over the size of the chocolate bits.

Not befitting occasions

Now while these cookies deserve all their accolades there are some occasions where I wouldn’t recommend them. After all keep in mind that these cookies are made from garbanzo B-E-A-N-S as how chickpeas are also known as. Unfortunately the human body is lacking an enzyme that would properly digest a sugar molecule that is common in many beans.

As a result an unpleasant reaction of the body might occur. You know the saying… So one of those not so adequate occasions to serve these cookies would be a chili cookout. Talking about bean overload. Or a camping trip. Camping and beans are also not the kind of dynamic duo that’s socially fully accepted.

Last two cents for a more worthy ending

Other than that these cookies certainly deserves to be tried. They are incredibly good. Texture- and taste-wise peanut butter goes really well in it and also helps to ‘disguise’ the bean flavor. When you don’t know it you will not taste the chickpeas. You and all the other lucky ones that get their try will be just enjoying some awesome cookies. Prepare to make some room for an extensive supply of canned chickpeas.

Print / PDF recipe

• The Basic (cutting board, chef’s knife)
• Food processor
• Spatula
• Baking sheet

Print / PDF recipe