Vegan Chickpea Dark Chocolate Chunk Blondies are the perfect mixture of sweet and salty baked into a fudgy cookie dough like bar bursting with dark chocolate chunks. Free of refined flour or sugar!
Happy Valentine’s Day friends!!!! What are your plans tonight? Out with the girls, romantic night in, dinner reservations? We will be pushing off our celebration till tomorrow because I have no idea what time I will be home tonight.
My last class of the day doesn’t end till 8 PM, so I usually don’t get home till 8:30 PM. Considering I’m a bed by 9:30 PM type person, that doesn’t leave too much time for romance, especially considering I left the house at 8 AM. At least I left with a couple of these to enjoy….
So on my list of things I’ve tried to like over the years but just couldn’t really make it work, all types of beans. I like hummus, refried beans, and that is pretty much where it stops. So, I’m very new to this whole “baking with beans” scene.
I remember the first time I saw a dessert recipe with beans (before I was a blogger) I’m pretty sure I commented “eww, can you taste that?!?!” (Terrible blogging karma for my future self. Note if you don’t have something nice to say don’t say anything at all.)
Last year I played around with baking with beans for one of the Recipe Redux challenges and it went well! I had a huge “cookie dough” craving so I decided to attempt my own healthy recipe to satisfy that craving!
Clearly, these blondies are not cookie dough, although I did eat my fair share of the batter so if you want cookie dough, just don’t bake them. Thankfully, some of my batter ended up in the pan because these came out so moist, almost fudgy, salty-sweet I don’t know what to do with myself.
I actually ground a whole dark chocolate bar and added that to the food processor too, I didn’t want to mess with chocolate chips I wanted the REAL thing with GIANT chunks of chocolate because that is what Valentine’s Day is about right?
I’m the last one to order or make something vegan, but an egg would have made these a bit more cake-like and I wanted them to be cookie dough like. OMG, can you imagine these over ice cream?
Why didn’t I think of that BEFORE the photo shoot! Welp, with Mr. Hungry dedicated to adhering to his food sensitivity test I guess I’ll have to take one for the team and eat all the ice cream and blondies I can tonight!
If you are a meal plan subscriber, this recipe will be appearing on your meal plan soon!
Not signed up yet? What to Eat? Meal Plans! are balanced, healthy, gluten-free meal plans designed by a Registered Dietitian (that’s me!) to make healthy eating more convenient. Plus they include delicious recipes from Hungry Hobby like this one! Learn More and Sign Up for a FREE Week!
Dark Chocolate Chunk Blondies
Ingredients
- 1 15 ounces can chickpeas/garbanzo beans 1.75 cups, drained and rinsed,
- 10 Medjool dates make sure they are soft and not super old and dried out
- 3 T melted coconut oil
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1.75 ounces vegan dark chocolate bar or chocolate chips
- sea salt and taste
- cooking spray
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Line a 8x 8 pan with parchment paper and spray with cooking spray.
- Add your dark chocolate to a food processor and pulse until broken up to desired texture. (I left them in pretty big chunks because I wanted big chunks of chocolate.)
- Remove dark chocolate from the food processor and set them aside. Combine chickpeas, dates, vanilla, salt, baking powder, baking soda and coconut oil in the food processor. Process them until you get a creamy smooth batter.
- Add in chocolate and pulse until well combined (alternatively you can mix by hand.)
- Pour batter into 8 x 8 dish and spread the batter evenly across the pan. (Use a rubber spatula sprayed with cooking oil to keep it from sticking.)
- Sprinkle the top with large sea salt crystals (I used Himalayan sea salt grinder.)
- Bake for 25-30 minutes until the edges are darkened and you insert a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean. It will look undercooked, it's okay!
- Let cool on cooling rack for 20 minutes before cutting into bars and enjoying!
Notes
Nutrition
Want more healthy treats? Check out my treats recipe index or try one of these!
Frosted Flourless Thumbprint Cookies
Grandma’s No Bake Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies
Double Chocolate Banana Cookies
I was totally the same when I first saw recipes that used beans. I have yet to make a dessert featuring beans, but it’s on list. I love that these have chunks of chocolate in them. They just might need to go on my menu for next week!
Right? It’s like EWWWWWWW but then it’s like oh, you can’t taste this at all!
The only thing that deters me from these types of recipes is the fact that I get so much fiber in my life already. But damn, I bet these are delicious!
Ha ha #healthyproblems lmao
I am obsessed with the idea of putting chickpeas into the mix!! Plus – blondies > brownies 😉
Okay now you are my favorite person ever! Blondies > Brownies – wy doesn’t the world understand this? I actually don’t like brownies unless they are so far removed from the real thing (read sweet potato peanut butter dark chocolate “brownie”) they aren’t a brownie anymore ha ha
I love recipes like this!! What a creative way to use chickpeas!
Thanks Tara!