Chickpea Chocolate Biscuits

When I first heard about these I was a bit sceptical.  Whoever thought chickpeas would be good in something sweet.  To be honest the very fist time I heard about chickpeas in something sweet was when a patient of mine was making a chocolate birthday cake.

She insisted that it was delicious and that piqued my interest, then I got given a chickpea fudge brownie recipe, but had lots of sugar in it and I thought "what's the point of making something healthier and then just putting a huge amount of sugar in it?".

So my first taste of sweet chickpea food was these biscuits, made by a friend of mine.  She too had found a recipe which she thought was too sweet and had adapted it, and here's my slight variation on her adaptation.

These are awesome because they are:

• Gluten Free
• Dairy Free
• Nut Free
• Could be egg free if you changed the sugar to maple syrup to make the mix moister
• Have some different protein from the chickpeas that most kids don't get (and I don't eat much of either!)
• Are very soft to eat
• Are really quick to make

One thing you will need though is a food processor

What You'll Need:

• 400g cooked chickpeas (I cooked my own, but you can use a can, just make sure they aren't too wet, it pays to pat them dry before using them)
• 1/4 cup brown sugar (I actually used organic coconut palm sugar, but that's just because that's what I've got in the house)
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 4 big spoonfuls of cocoa powder (use as much as is to your taste)
• 1 egg (mainly to get moisture in, you could use maple syrup instead of sugar and get rid of the egg if you need egg free recipes)
• 100g (less if you want, but that's the size of the packet I got) chocolate (I prefer to get a block and cut it up as there's better chocolate that way - I can get organic - but if you like chocolate bits that's fine too)

How To Make Them

Set your oven to 180 degrees C

Whizz up your chickpeas, sugar, cocoa, egg and essence in a food processor (I guess you could try using a stick mixer, but I'm not sure if it would do the job very well).

Cut up your chocolate into chocolate bit sized pieces and stir in by hand so it's evenly combined.

Grab small handfuls and roll into disc shape (just to the size that you like) and place on a baking tray (I lined mine with baking paper, but if you're not lazy and can be bothered washing up they don't stick much anyway).

You can see that my toddler was helping me.  Your hands get fairly dirty because the mix is quite moist so make sure they're in old clothes!!

Bake for 10 minutes.

Voila!!  These are possibly my favourite biscuits at the moment!!

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