I recently started following Lauren Brimley on instagram (Eating_Whole). I'd definitely recommend following her. She's a young mom with one baby who has committed to feeding herself healthy and clean foods. Her pictures are incredible and make healthy eating look delicious (not the easiest, in my opinion).
With four kids and a husband, I don't think we will be eating 100% clean and/or whole any time soon, but I have started trying to include more of this type of eating into our meal plan. Baby steps :) I'm shooting for an 80/20 ratio in the long run, with the 80 being clean/healthy.
I've seen a few versions of these cookies floating around the internet and pinterest. I have alway been intrigued and wondered if the people making them were just so far into eating clean that their palate had changed enough to "think" these tasted like a real cookie.
Today I realized I had all the ingredients on hand and we decided to try them out as an "experiment". If I'm being honest, as I dumped all the ingredients into the food processor I couldn't help laughing. There's not a snowballs chance these are going to be good. And then I tasted the dough, under my breath I may have mentioned there were not enough chocolate chips in all the world to save these bad boys, and then I turned to my two sweet helpers and said... "Let's hope the oven makes some magic" and that's really what I thought.
The oven did in fact make some magic.. I'm not really sure how, but out of my oven came a dense, chewy and soft chocolate chip cookie. Not overly sweet but also not bean-y or cardboard-ish. My four kids ranging from 10 to 2, ate them and asked for seconds, and I won't mention how many I have put down.. they are healthy.. right?
The moral of this story, while not your typical chocolate chip cookies, these are a pretty incredible substitute. We will definitely be making these again and again. Our experiment was deemed a success.
Without further ado, I give you Lauren's version of the
Chickpea Chocolate Chip Cookie...
1 1/4 cup rinsed chickpeas
1/2 cup almond butter
1/4 cup unsweeted coconut
1/4 cup oats
1/4 cup pure maple syrup OR honey (I did half and half)
1 tsp baking powder
dash of salt
Mix all ingredients together in a food processor until creamy like a cookie dough. Add 1/2 - 3/4 cup chocolate chips depending on how chocolatey you like your cookies. With damp hands form into cookie balls and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.
Makes 12-15 cookies
Let me know if you try them out and what you think. Also note, that I enjoyed these even while eating plenty of refined sugar on a nearly daily basis.. baby steps, remember :)
