Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites

I've made this recipe a couple of times and they are delicious. They're about 125 cal/pc and 4 grams protein, It's hard to believe they're made with chick peas. The only downside is getting the chick peas smooth.

Prep Time: 8 min
Cook Time: 10 min
Ready in: 18 min
Yield: 14 1" cookies (mine made 18)

Ingredients

1¼ cups canned chickpeas, well-rinsed and patted dry with a paper towel
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ cup + 2 tablespoons (165 grams) natural peanut butter, SunButter Natural or almond butter - room temperature
¼ cup (80 grams) honey (commenters have used agave and maple syrup with success!)
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt if your peanut butter doesn't have salt in it
½ cup (90 grams) chocolate chips (use vegan and dairy-free chocolate chips, if needed)

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350°F / 175°C. Combine all the ingredients, except for the chocolate chips, in a food processor and process until very smooth. Make sure to scrape the sides and the top to get the little chunks of chickpeas and process again until they're combined.

Put in the chocolate chips and stir it if you can, or pulse it once or twice. The mixture will be very thick and sticky.
With wet hands, form into 1½" balls. Place onto a Silpat or a piece of parchment paper. If you want them to look more like normal cookies, press down slightly on the balls. They don't do much rising.

Bake for about 10 minutes. The dough balls will still be very soft when you take them out of the oven. They will not set like normal cookies.

Store in an airtight container at room temperature (or in the fridge) for up to 1 week.

Notes

My can of chickpeas was 400 grams, 240 grams without the water, and I used all but a few tablespoons.
Don't even try with regular peanut butter! They'll come out oily. You MUST use natural peanut butter.
If you need grain-free baking powder, you can use 1 part cream of tartar + 1 part baking soda + 2 parts arrowroot.

Chickpea cookies! Chickpea cookies with no flour, no oil, no white sugar. These are just full of chickpeas. And they’re my very favorite healthy cookie so far! I don’t know if they really classify as cookies so I’ll go with cookie dough bites.

And as a bonus, they’re grain-free, gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan. Just in case that matters to anyone out there! And if you’re worried about the chickpeas, don’t be. I don’t like chickpeas and won’t eat them but that didn’t prevent me from inhaling these.
The Original Grain-free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites - no white sugar, no oil, no flour! So gooey, simple and delicious! With a surprise ingredient | texanerin.com

These need the chocolate. Don’t go making them without the chocolate and then tell me that they weren’t sweet or gooey enough! These would be incredibly boring without the chocolate. And for some weird reason, these cookie dough bites do not taste yummy in dough form. Baking them somehow brings out the sweetness and peanut butter flavor. Or maybe it’s just all that melted chocolate.
The Original Grain-free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites - no flour, no oil and no white sugar! Quick, easy, and gooey with a surprise ingredient! | texanerin.com

One thing I’ve learned since starting this blog is that people really love closeups of melted stuff. So there you go.
The Original Grain-free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites - no flour, no sugar and no oil! Gooey, quick and easy with a surprise ingredient! | texanerin.com

These aren’t the most beautiful cookie dough bites, but fresh out of the oven, with all that gooey chocolate, I bet you can’t tell that these are made with chickpeas. Or are grain-free. But cold? Yuck. These need to be warm! You can either freeze the balls and pop a few in the oven whenever it’s on, or simply put them in the microwave until they’re warm and gooey again.

Please read the following before asking a question! It will probably answer your question.

Tons of people have posted the nutritional analysis for these. They’re supposedly anywhere between 80-130 calories, which seems like a huge range to me. Please use a recipe analyzer like on CalorieCount if you need more information.
You can use almond butter, sun butter, or whatever nut butter like you.
The peanut butter should be the kind with only peanuts and salt. No added fat or sugar. Be careful because there are some “natural” brands out there which aren’t really natural. I find that this peanut butter is usually expensive so I make my own. You can make your own in only 5 minutes with a food processor. Check that out here.
Chickpea flour won’t work. I don’t think plain hummus will either.
I haven’t tried anything other than chickpeas but others have used butter beans, navy beans, red kidney beans, great northern beans, and lentils with success. I generally don’t like goodies made with those types of beans but I love these cookies made with chickpeas. Please use chickpeas unless you have an allergy!
Doing this in a blender (unless it’s a Blendtec blender or something equally powerful) won’t work and might kill the blender.
Adding random stuff like eggs… probably won’t work either. Experimenting is great but I think this is a bad recipe to experiment with. But thanks to the experimenters who left feedback, I’ve been able to update the recipe with alternatives to honey and peanut butter. Thanks everyone!
For a totally sugar free version, use 30 drops of Stevia and cacao nibs.
Do not double the recipe! It might be too much for your machine and could damage it.
For a vegan version, you can’t use honey. Use agave. Also be sure to check your chocolate chips! I’ve used these Enjoy Life chocolate chips and they are amazing!