This week was both incredibly busy, yet incredibly exciting. I'm off overseas the coming week to visit family in Aussie and then spend a few blissful days at Gwinganna Health Retreat, so it's been full-on between clinical and community work, touching base with clients and ensuring everything ticks over nicely while I'm away. This week was also the long-awaited launch of SKIN by Ecostore, which I'm so excited to be on board as a brand ambassador! I absolutely adore these product, and true to Ecostore they're both safer for us and the environment. There's heaps of neat things to come with SKIN, and I'll be doing a full blog post on it all soon. Anyway, enough life updates for now - onto these cookies...
Last week, pizza made of cauliflower, this week, cookies made of beans. I'm likely only fuelling the stereotype of weird things health nuts eat, but using black beans (or other beans for that matter) within the culinary realm of desserts totally works! Not only that, but it's nothing new either - many cultures around the world have been using beans in their desserts for yonks, and with their superb nutritional profile, including fiber (for gut health), iron (for energy), b-vitamins (for stress support), and impressive plant-based protein content, why not sneak them into desserts too?
When used as a base in baking, black beans create a moist soft texture, which can only be described by one word - fudgey. So instead of a crunchy cookie, you get a lovely soft inside, which is really quite divine. They're also really easy to make too, you just add all of the ingredients into a food processor, blitz up and you're good to go! I like top these with a few chocolate chips/cacao nibs before baking, however they're also gorgeous with a drizzle of chocolate - they have to get their double chocolate name from somewhere, so take your pick (or you could be cheeky like me and do both).
These are nice on a dessert platter, piled up blueberries, strawberries, medjool dates, dark chocolate and a few of the cookies.
Double Chocolate Black Bean Cookies
Ingredients
1x 400g tin of black beans
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup coconut sugar (or sub for another granulated sugar)
1/3 cup cacao powder/cocoa powder (I love using a dark cocoa powder - that's what makes mine so dark!)
1 tbsp melted coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg
1/4 cup water
Pinch of salt
Extras: dark chocolate chips
Method
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
2. Open tin of black beans and drain in a sieve. Hold under running water, until the water runs clear.
3. Add into a food processor all of the ingredients, except the chocolate chips. Process until the batter is smooth. The batter will be be super thick, with enough consistency to hold together. Remove the blade and mix through a small handful of chocolate chips, reserving a few to sprinkle on top.
4. Spoon tablespoons of the mixture onto the baking tray, and shape (using your spoon/finger) into cookie shapes if required - you should get around 12 cookies form the mixture. Drop a few chocolate chips on top.
5. Bake for around 12 minutes - keep an eye on them in the last few minutes so they don't burn. Remove from oven and let cool completely - they will harden up as the cool. Enjoy!
Note: as these cookies are made up of a base of black beans (which are a moist ingredient) they will have a short shelf-life, and so are best eaten and shared on the day they're made.