Easy Christmas cookies with a nice loaf of bread I made earlier. Weird light in my kitchen.
There's a cookie contest going on, and as I was baking today, I thought I would try out a new recipe for chocolate chip cookies. One small problem: I didn't have any chocolate chips, so I tried dried cranberries and walnuts.
It's a good basic recipe that you can add your own flavourings to:
1 can chickpeas (or 200g cooked chickpeas).
1/2 cup and a bit nut butter (I used smooth peanut butter).
1/4 cup any flour - wheat, chickpea, rice, oat.
1 teaspoon baking powder.
1/4 teaspoon salt.
Sweetener (sugar, honey, maple syrup etc) to taste.
For chocolate chip cookies, you can add:
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For Christmas cookies, you can add:
1/2 mixed dried cranberries and walnuts
1 teaspoon cinnamon or mixed spice
The method is very easy:
Whizz everything together in a food processor.
Shape into twelve balls and flatten slightly on a baking tray.
Bake for 12 minutes at 180 degrees centigrade (or equivalent).
Allow to cool and firm up for ten minutes or so, then remove to a cooling tray.
Eat with a nice beverage.
You can also make them with a tin of black beans rather than chickpeas to get dark, more dense cookies.
I found these in a cookie video by @saucestache, a vegan cook on youtube. He has lots of ideas for things like cheesecake, and seems to be especially fond of creating things with a tin or two of chickpeas. As tinned chickpeas are very inexpensive, that is okay!
I liked that they didn't take long to make, you probably have all the ingredients in the cupboard, or things you can easily substitute, and they're a nice activity (with a scrummy reward) if you have children around. They're easy to put together if you suddenly get a text that visitors are on their way.
I used jumbo oats that I processed for a couple of minutes to create oat flour before I added all the other ingredients except the fruit and nuts - just fold those in at the end when the cookie dough is ready. Incidentally, the cookie dough tastes quite nice raw.
The cooked dough held together very well and was nice and fudge-y inside, like a brownie. I was pleased with that because in the video, they fell apart quite easily. They went nicely with a cup of tea. I also tried one crumbled over some yoghurt and grapes that I'd roasted in the air fryer. Very nice - you could try lots of different topping with this one!
