If you ask the kids if they want to make chocolate cookies the answer is almost always a very enthusiastic “YES!” True, you may not get the same level of enthusiasm if you call them Chocolate Chickpea Cookies. However, if you make the chocolate chickpea cookies and act as if the chickpeas are just a normal ingredient in the recipe, you might be surprised that the kids will likely think so too! Well, at least the ones younger than about age six =)
If you happened to read my recent article on how to get kids to eat healthy, you may recall that one of my tips was to introduce kids to clean eating with cleaner remakes of classic favorites. Serving cleaner versions of dishes your kids already recognize (such as chocolate cookies!) will almost always be better received rather than serving something radically new and unfamiliar.
My second tip for getting kids to eat healthy was to get them into the kitchen and get them cooking.
I followed my own advice when Cherie Fromson, our Clean Cuisine Health Coach, brought her daughter Emery to spend the afternoon with me last week. Emery is six years old and she didn’t seem to think there was anything odd about adding chickpeas to the cookie dough batter, by the way.
How To Make Chocolate Chickpea Cookies
If the idea of mixing beans into your cookie batter does not sound all that appetizing, don’t worry! You truly do not taste the beans at all.
Chickpeas in particular have a very mild flavor and happen to be a great bean for mixing into cookie batter. All you have to do is puree the chickpeas with the wet ingredients and then proceed like any other cookie by mixing the wet with the dry.
Cleaner Cookie Tips:
In addition to adding beans to the batter, here’s what else I did to clean up my chocolate cookie recipe…
7 Steps to Making a Healthier Chocolate Cookie
- Swap superfood organic, unrefined red palm oil for butter (Note: the red palm oil is the reason the batter looks orange-red in the photo with Emery below)
- Use sprouted whole grain spelt flour instead of enriched flour.
- Add bananas as a sweetener.
- Use unrefined natural sweeteners (pure maple syrup and coconut palm sugar) rather than regular sugar.
- Use organic, pasture-raised eggs rather than conventional eggs.
- Use superfood raw cacao powder instead of cocoa powder.
- And finally, I added in raw walnuts for an omega-3 boost!
Like most kids who participate in the cooking process, Emery loved the Chocolate Chickpea Cookies. But just to make sure they were really kid-approved, we even tested them on her friends, sisters Kaylee and Brynn Scianandre 😉
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Chocolate Chickpea Cookies look and taste like regular cookies but are made with superfood beans, sweetened with bananas and unrefined sugar, dairy free and 100% whole grain.
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup organic (unrefined red palm oil)
- 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 organic (pasture-raised egg)
- 1 can (15 ounces chickpeas, rinsed and drained)
- 1 ripe banana (chopped)
- 1/4 cup pure maple syrup
- 1 1/2 cups spelt flour (I like One Degree Organic Sprouted Spelt Flour)
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon Pink Himalayan Sea Salt
- 1/2 cup coconut palm sugar
- 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon cacao powder (I like Navitas Naturals)
- 3/4 cup chopped raw walnuts
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- In a high speed blender (such as a Vitamix) or food processor, add the oil, vanilla, egg, chickpeas, banana and syrup; process until smooth and creamy. Set wet mixture aside.
- In a medium sized mixing bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, sugar and cacao powder. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. Stir in the walnuts.
- Drop the dough by heaping tablespoonful onto the baking sheet, spacing the cookies about an inch apart. Bake until cookies are just cooked through, about 13 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool.
WANT TO GET YOUR WHOLE FAMILY ON BOARD WITH EATING CLEAN?
Be sure to check out our Clean Cuisine book! The book outlines an 8-Week program that the entire family (including the kids!) can follow together.
Can I substitute olive oil or coconut oil in place of the red palm oil if I don’t have the red palm oil on hand.
Hi Holly, you can substitute extra virgin coconut oil for sure, but I wouldn’t use olive oil only because it cooks much differently than either coconut oil or red palm oil.