I’ve made countless attempts at healthying up some of our favourite treats – with mixed success – and have shared before my recipes for chickpea brownies and chocolate orange energy balls. They are genuine hits at Badger HQ, but this cookie bake is the best yet. It is tremendous. There’s more vanilla than usual in the recipe, and consequently not a hint of chickpea flavour remains, thank heavens.
A visiting 10 year old proclaimed this to be “one of the best things she’d ever tasted”. For something hiding a can of chickpeas, I take this as a massive victory.
It’s super easy to make, really just a case of chucking the ingredients into a food processor (you could give it a bash with a blender) before slinging in the oven. I urge you to try them – they’re not just good for something that’s pretty healthy, they’re just good. Please give them a whirl.
Ingredients
- 1 x can chickpeas, drained and thoroughly rinsed.
- 50g oats (I whizzed them up in my blender first)
- 2 tbsp plain yoghurt (vanilla would also be fine)
- 1 egg
- 30g softened/melted butter
- 1 tbsp nut butter (optional – almond is nice)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- Pinch of salt
- 100g brown sugar (you could cut this down to about 80g if you particularly wanted to)
- 100g dark chocolate, cut into chunks
You will need: a food processor, a 20cm square tin (or something of a similar area), lined with baking paper, or at the very least, very thoroughly greased.
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Blitz the chickpeas in the food processor – you really do want them to be as smooth as possible – and then add the rest of the ingredients (apart from the chocolate chips), scraping down the sides frequently and processing for a good 3 minutes, until the mix is pretty smooth.
- Add the chocolate chips and tip the mix into your lined tin, smoothing down the top. The mixture will be pretty runny.
- Bake for approx 20 mins, until the top is a golden brown crust. Leave to cool in the tin.
- It’s nice to eat warm with ice cream, or cooled, just because.
raising badgers 