Gluten Free Double Chocolate Cookies

Birthdays at work have been fun lately - some harmless pranks (I guess I am enjoying them as I haven’t been pranked yet!), lunch with the team, and to make up for some of the pranking, we try to make some sweets. Recently I made some chewy chocolate cookies for a colleague’s birthday. We try to find gluten free recipes such as this one so that everyone in the team can enjoy. A lot of recipes call for gluten free all purpose flour or oat flour. But this particular one from the Power Hungry blog piqued my interest because of the flour used in it. These cookies are made with chickpea flour (Yay protein!). The recipe also used coconut oil which is a healthier fat than butter or vegetable oil, but I’m personally not a big fan of the chocolate and coconut combination. I did have coconut oil which I use for cooking often, so I decided to give it a try anyway, and was pleasantly surprised at how well the chocolate and coconut flavors complemented each other in this recipe. It’s wasn’t overpoweringly coconut-y, and the chocolate flavor definitely was the most prominent. The only change I made to the original recipe was reducing the sugar quantity. I recommend this recipe to all chocolate lovers - it’s simple to make and not that unhealthy :-)

Ingredients:

1 cup chickpea flour

⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

¾ teaspoon baking soda

A small pinch of salt

1 large egg

½ cup virgin coconut oil

½ cup packed dark brown sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon instant coffee powder/granules (optional - but recommended! It really helps enhance the chocolate flavor)

½ cup bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips (optional)

2 Tbsp chopped nuts (optional)

Sift the chickpea flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl. Sifting is ideal for this recipe as both chickpea flour and cocoa powder often have small lumps. But if you don’t have a sifter or a sieve, just whisk the ingredients until you see the lumps disappear.

Coconut oil has a tendency to solidify, so if required microwave it for a few seconds to melt it to bring it to liquid form and add the coffee powder to it.

In a large bowl, whisk together the oil & coffee mixture with the sugar. Once combined, add the egg, vanilla extract and whisk until blended.

Add the flours and mix until everything comes together to form fairly thick dough. Add chocolate chips, nuts, and mix. To prevent cookies from spreading too much as they bake, cover and refrigerate the dough for ~15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Roll the chilled dough into 1” balls and place them about 2” apart on the prepared cookie sheet. Bake for ~10 minutes until the edges are firm.

 

Resist the urge to bite into a piping hot cookie, but be prepared to gorge on these once they are cooled - I bet it would be hard to stop at one!

 

~Gayatri

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Gluten-free double chocolate cookies - if you've never made cookies with chickpea flour (besan), give this a shot!...

Posted by The Cooks of Cake and Kindness on Monday, April 4, 2016