Chickpea Bake Fest

I had a bag of chickpeas (other wise known as garbanzo beans...it's kind of complicated, apparently) sitting in the pantry last week. I also happened to be crazing snack foods, so I figured I could roast some up and boom, snacky craving satisfied. Except to take dry beans to roasted snack food takes a while. It's not like you just tear into a bag of chips, awesome as that may sound.
That's the thing about truly eating clean...it is a labor of love sometimes. Sure, there are ways to make things less time consuming, and I'm all for that. But when you put a lot of time and effort into preparing healthy foods, you A) burn more calories through all the work and B) you appreciate your food more and then C) over eat less.
So back to the story. I soaked the beans overnight sometime last week, then cooked them the next day, ran out of time and just threw them in the fridge once they cooled.
Then my kids got sick. I had a lot of work events. #Lifehappens
So last night I got tired of looking at them in the fridge and put "roast chick peas" on my to-do list, because that's how things actually get done around here. Except dusting...dusting takes an Act of God.

So I set about to roast my chick peas and realized I didn't want/need to roast the whole lot of them. So I googled around and found a few recipes I wanted to clean up/personalize and voila! They are below.

Roasted Chickpea Snack bites

2 splashes olive oil
heap of cumin powder (about a tablespoon)
heap of garlic powder (or if you don't like garlic flavor, less)
a few shakes of chili powder (About .5 tsp)
a few shakes of sea salt
dash of ground pepper
dash of red pepper flakes
2 cups of prepared chickpeas

In a small mixing bowl, combine oil and spices. Toss in chickpeas and stir to coat. Place onto parchment paper covered (or just greased) cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes.

Chocolate Chickpea Bread (or cake, whatever)

2 cups prepared chickpeas
2 heaping tablespoons cocoa powder (dutch or special dark preferred)
1 tsp baking powder
several dashes sea salt
2 tablespoons white whole wheat flour (need a bit more if using agave vs. sugar)
.25 cup brown sugar (or agave)
.25 cup honey
4 eggs
.5 tbsp vanilla
1 tablespoon melted (grassfed) butter
.33 cup dark chocolate chips (about a handful)

In a smallish bowl, combine melted butter, vanilla, honey, eggs, and agave if using. In medium mixing bowl blend baking powder, cocoa, salt, flour, and sugar if using instead of agave. Combine the wet mixture into the dry mix bowl. Using sturdy food processor, grind the chickpeas until they are ground into a flour like substance. Blend into batter. Stir in chocolate chips. Line a bread pan with parchment paper and pour batter in. Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes until set and toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Chickpea Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I just used remaining chickpeas from that bag I had prepared, I think it should equal about 1.5 c or a bit less
2 tsp vanilla
.5 cup pure almond butter
.25 cup honey (I also squeezed in a dollop of agave just for flavor balancing, so if you have it, do it)
1 tsp baking powder
a few dashes of salt
.33 cup dark chocolate chips (about a handful)

Process the chickpeas until finely ground. Dump in the rest of the ingredients (except chocolate), process for about 2 minutes or until a lump starts to form and make its way around the bowl, kind of creating a ball of dough. Take out the blade and mix in chocolate chips. Place 12 mounds onto a lined or greased cookie sheet. Flatten down a bit. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 (with about 5 minutes left, I reached in a smashed them down into cookie form, since they don't really do that on their own).