A healthy and delicious treat, these cookie dough bites are a sweet reprieve from the post-New Year’s attempt to eat healthy by eating bland.

You can indulge in these cookies without feeling guilty – particularly because of the ingredients.

Chickpeas are great to add to your diet because they’re high in fibre and protein, which will fill you up – yet they contain few calories and are filled with more nutrients. It’s also a cholesterol reduction food and will help lower bad cholesterol levels, which helps reduce the risk of heart disease.

These cookies turned out different than I had expected: They were a lot softer because of the natural oils in the almond butter but, they were still quite delicious. This recipe is great for people who don’t like chickpeas because, good news, you can’t really taste that distinct chickpea taste. Even though I couldn’t taste the chickpeas, I could definitely feel the texture, which might also be because I didn’t mash the chickpeas as well as I should have. The peanut butter definitely helps to mask the chickpea taste, which is amazing if you love peanut butter – and who doesn’t like peanut butter!

Even when I added less of the honey and maple syrup, the dough cookies still turned out to be pretty sweet, which is good for those who like their cookies extra sweet. If you like your cookies less sweet, like myself, I suggest putting less honey and maple syrup!

Ingredients:

• 1¼ cups of canned chickpeas, well-rinsed and patted dry with a paper towel
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
• ½ cup and 2 tablespoons natural peanut butter, SunButter Natural or almond butter – room temperature
• ¼ cup of maple syrup (I used 1/8 honey and 1/8 maple syrup)
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• a pinch of salt if your peanut butter doesn’t have salt in it
• ½ cup of chocolate chips (I recommend a little bit less because the chocolate chips overwhelmed the cookies a little bit.)

Note: I used milk chocolate chips because I’m not vegan but if you are, then semisweet dairy free chocolate chips would be the obvious option.

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. The instructions call for putting everything in a food processor or blender, but I tried that and it ruined my blender.

   
   Note: I recommend mashing the chickpeas with a fork, or blending the chickpeas first in the food processer. Since the peanut butter or almond butter is quite sticky, it can slow down your machine. I made the mistake of combining everything in one blender. It was just overall very sticky and the mixture didn’t blend well. Refer to pointers in step two to help make your dough cookies turn out better with less of a fuss.

3. Put in chocolate chips and stir into mixture evenly. The dough can be quite sticky, so be careful when handling it
4. Scoop the dough on to an greased tray or parchment paper on a tray with a spoon and form a ball shape.
   
5. Bake for about 10 minutes. After taking them out, let cookies set for a bit and then gently scrape them off and put them on a flat surface. I let my dough cookies cool further on a cooling rack until I needed to pack them up and store them away.
   

Note: These are not normal cookies so they will be soft even after they have cooled.

Cookies can be stored in a container for up to one week Since these are meant to be “dough bites” they’re going to turn out as soft cookies. They’ll be quite fragile and have a paste and doughy texture but, regardless, they’re still pretty amazing.

Recipe adapted from texanerin.com