If you follow me on twitter, instagram or know me, you may have guessed that I love keeping fit and eating healthy (When I post indulgent cake recipes on my blog I always share out the end product 😉 instead of eating it to myself ;)). But I always will have a sweet tooth which used to cause such a dilemma, how can you eat cookies when your on a fairly strict fitness regime? After lots of researching to find out how to overcome this problem I finally have started to understand the ‘science’ behind healthy treats and the products you can use to substitute those that aren’t so healthy. One major difference that keeps coming up whilst I research is to use vegetables in your baking! Not so scary when you think about it….look at carrot cake, it’s not that extreme. So in this healthy coconut & chocolate cookie recipe the secret ingredient is chickpeas. Don’t let it put you off, I promise you won’t be able to tell.
Another reason why you should give these a go is that there gluten free and from knowing people who are gluten intolerant they were very appreciative of this recipe. No going out and buying expensive special flour anymore :).
This recipe replaces normal butter for coconut butter. Coconut butter is a whole food, which means it still carries all the nutrients and essential healthy fats that nature intended. The healthy fat given from coconut butter gets absorbed quickly into the bloodstream and therefore gives us a good source of ‘quick’ energy. I got mine off Amazon, I use it in lots of baking and recommend it 🙂
The only extra pointer for this recipe is that a food processor will come in handy :).
Recipe
Servings: 11 Prep Time 10mins Cook Time: 10 mins Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients
- 240g / 5oz Chickpeas (drained)
- 60g / 1 & 1/2oz Coconut Butter (melted)
- 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 2 Tablespoon Flaked Coconut
- 1 Tablespoon Honey
- 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
- 90g / 2oz Dark Chocolate (cut in to chips)
1. Preheat your oven to 180oc or gas mark 4 and line a baking tray with baking paper.
2. In a food processor blend the chickpeas until smooth.
3. Melt you coconut butter in the microwave (I recommend melting it in short 30 second blasts), give it a stir and make sure it’s nice and smooth. Add your blended chickpeas to your coconut butter.
4. Add the vanilla extract, flaked coconut, baking powder and honey to the mixture and mix so it’s nicely blended in.
5. Measure your dark chocolate out and roughly chop in to chips, add to the mixture and stir.
6. With lightly wet hands roll the mixture into balls and place on the baking tray. With a fork, gently press down to flatten out the cookie mixture (ps. the mixture doesn’t spread out so don’t fear about them being close together). Bake for 10 mins and enjoy….no one will ever know your secret ingredient ;).
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To Your Inbox
Can you confirm, is it only 5 oz of chickpeas and 2 oz of coconut butter? 5 oz of chickpeas is only about 1/3 of a can, just seems like it would need more? Wanted to confirm before I try them 🙂 Thanks.
Hey Im pretty sure it is a full tin 🙂 Don’t know why I have wrote that. Should work give or take a little anyway. As long as you end up with a dough like mixture it should work 🙂
Hey! I’m really tempted to immediately try this recipe!
My only question is about the temperature of the oven. You say to preheat it to 1800c, what do you mean by that? Like how many degrees Celcius? Or was it a typo and supposed to say 180 c :-)?
Thank you!