Blondie Ambition

My sister sent me a link to a blondie recipe the other day, and I was intrigued enough about it to feel the need to put on my amateur food blogger's cap. (It's a bit like a chef's toque, but comes with a long feather plume splashed with toner ink, looks a bit rumpled as is befitting amateur status, and is, of course, completely imaginary. The Emperor's New Amateur Food Blogger's Cap.)

:: settles TENAFBC on head a là Sheldon and his thinking cap in TBBT ::

Why this blondie recipe, and not any of the other blondie recipes I've bookmarked to date? The main ingredient caught me: chickpeas. Or garbanzo beans for anyone of an Over-The-Pond persuasion. A staple of many main meals and savoury snacks, but not one I'd seen in anything sweet before. But what can I say, I had a can in my food cupboard and all the other necessary ingredients of the recipe just sitting there, so I thought I'd give it a go, knowing that even if it was a culinary disaster that I'd probably eat it anyway.

And I wonder why I haven't reached a size ten yet...

Flourless Chocolate Chip Chickpea Blondies with Sea-Salt from Ambition Kitchen.

You need: 

1 (425g or 15 oz.) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained (I used peas very close in consistency to chickies).

125g or 1/2 cup peanut butter, almond butter, or your favourite nut butter (I used peanut butter).

113g or 1/3 cup maple syrup, honey or agave nectar (I used honey).

2 tsps vanilla extract.

½ tsp salt.

¼ tsp baking powder.

¼ tsp baking soda.

60g or ⅓ cup semisweet chocolate chips + 2 tbs extra for topping.

sea salt for sprinkling on top.

This is a very quick batter to make up, so I recommend following the recipe and preheating your oven to 175C or 350F right from the get-go because there's not going to be much in the way of hanging around waiting for a too-warm cookie batter to cool, or shortbread logs to set, so finally (finally!) no being asked to waste electricity for a couple of hours keeping an oven at optimum toastiness while you go through a long and convoluted creative sequence involving multiple ingredients, using complicated ‘time-saving' appliances.

(Don't worry, if I ever get to a place in my life where I have access to a full-sized oven, I'm sure I won't be quite so blasé with pre-heating times, or the construction process, but at the moment I own a tiny table-top oven that heats up in the blink of an eye, and am loathed to waste money I don't have on keeping it suitably cosy for half an hour while I, for example, attempt to pummel chickpeas into sludgy submission!)

So, once you have stepped off your soap-box, you are asked to add all the ingredients except the chocolate chips to a food processor, or, in true El-Cheapo fashion, add them to a rather creaky but serviceable herb chopper/hand-processor, or whatever they're called, and buzz them for a few minutes until you get a smooth batter. (Although I have to say that a creaky but serviceable herb chopper whose only working speed is ‘low' is not the most perfect implement to completely mash up the chickpeas, so if you have a proper food processor I'd use that so you don't have to attack the batter with a wooden spoon after whizzing it to within an inch of its motor's life yet not getting the mix past the chunky stage.)

But after you've achieved Batter: Smooth(ish), fold in the 60 grams of chocolate chips, 

spread the mix evenly in a prepared pan (non-stick spray coating, or greaseproof paper, or whatever method you prefer...), sprinkle the remaining two tablespoons of chocolate chips over the top,

then bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean and the edges are a light brown.

Or... um... not quite burnt.

(I ended up covering the pan in tinfoil after 20 minutes and then putting it in for another ten, because although the edges were starting to bear the brunt of the little oven's heating bars, the cake tester wasn't coming out clean. In all, it stayed in the oven for thirty minutes, enough to bake the batter through, and fill my flat with the delicious smell of chocolate and peanut butter!)

You're advised to let it cool on a wire rack before cutting it up, but be careful as it's of quite a fragile consistency, and I lost a few edges on the way from the pan to the rack, (the blondie's loss is my gain, of course), and once it's completely cool and more stable, you can sprinkle it with sea-salt and slice it up.

Of course, doling out advice about texture and appearance is something I'm hardly qualified to do, considering my Extreme Amateur Food Blogger™ status, and the state of the photo directly above, but it's fair to say that this isn't your average blondie/brownie consistency, and I've seen the suggestion in a couple of similar recipes of adding an egg to the mixture to cake it up a little. That being said, it's rather delicious, if a little dense, and the only reason I know there are chickpeas in the make-up rather than flour is because I put them in myself. Taste-wise it's just a smooshy peanut-butter and chocolate chip extravaganza, with perhaps a little nod towards the original savouriness of the chickpeas by the addition of a sprinkling of sea-salt on top, but otherwise you can't tell they're there at all.

If you fancy something a little different it might be worth swapping the choc chips with caramel chips (if you can find them) for another yummy taste combination (my sister, the reason this post exists, is a sucker for anything of a salted-caramel persuasion), but whatever you choose to do, be warned: they are moreish, and you might just have to tell people that they're made with chickpeas just so you can keep some for yourself!