Using legumes in salty and sweet pastry dough is something more and more common that allows us to eliminate gluten and add many healthier nutrients than refined flours. AND we do not use flour in these chocolate cookies of chickpeas, but the cooked legume, duly crushed with other ingredients that are also very nutritious to achieve cookies with just the right point of sweetness that will fill us with energy and satiety.
The author of the recipe, Marta Greber, prepares these cookies with her young daughter especially for breakfast, thus giving us another way to consume legumes first thing in the morning and to take advantage of their properties in a bite that, despite everything, it must be occasional. Although we use a vegetable sweetener such as agave, maple or date syrup, they are still pastries and, although nutritious, they are very energetic.
We recommend using a good chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa to reduce sugars and enhance their beneficial effects, and add some aroma that we like. We have added vanilla, but spices such as cinnamon or ginger, cardamom, orange zest, etc. would do just as well. It is a good time to re-vindicate the delicious and surprising couple that make chickpeas with chocolate.
Preheat the oven to 175ºC with air or 180ºC with heat up and down. Prepare a baking tray with non-stick parchment paper.
Drain the chickpeas and rinse gently, leaving them very dry. Arrange in a robot or food processor with all the other ingredients except chocolate. Blend in batches, stirring when necessary, until you have a homogeneous mass; slight tripping may remain.
Chop the dark chocolate roughly with a knife on a good board and add it to the dough, stirring by hand until integrated. Take walnut-sized portions, roll with your hands and distribute slightly apart on the tray. If it is very sticky, refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Smash them lightly with a moistened fork or with your fingers, and bake for about 10-12 minutes, until they are golden with a toasted tone. Remove from the oven, wait 10 minutes and transfer to a rack to cool completely.
With milk, a vegetable drink, coffee or an infusion, and some fresh fruit, we will have a breakfast or snack more than nutritious and satisfying to face a long day. They are also a very appetizing treat for after-dinner or for a snack, combining very well with that coffee that replenishes us after eating, or to recharge energy between meals or on an excursion. We recommend storing them in an airtight container in the least cold part of the fridge, I want the kitchen to stay cool. If they are to be consumed in a couple of days, they can be kept at room temperature.
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