Fudgy, Flourless Gluten-Free Chickpea Brownies Recipe

Name: Fudgy, Flourless Gluten-Free Chickpea Brownies Recipe
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: Gluten-Free
Ingredients: 1 15 ounce can chickpeas (rinsed and drained); 1 cup raw, unsalted cashews (soaked for 1 hour in warm water discard the water after done soaking); 1/2 cup cocoa powder; 1/3 cup pure maple syrup (agave or honey can be substituted); 1 egg; 1 tsp vanilla; 1/2 tsp baking powder; 1/4 tsp baking soda; 1/4 tsp Real Salt; 1/3 cup dark chocolate chips (optional)

February 6, 2018 // by Rebecca Baron 55 Comments

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These gluten-free chickpea brownies don’t have flour of any kind, yet they are totally different from my flourless black bean brownies. Those are a lot lighter, while these are a lot richer and more like fudge, so no matter what type of gluten-free brownie you like, I have you covered!

Happy Monday! I thought we would kick off the week with a little bit of chocolate (since Monday’s usually require some chocolate). These brownies are a rich, dense, and decadent chocolate treat. They are also full of fiber, healthy fats, protein, various micronutrients, are super simple to make, and free of refined sugars…whew – my kind of brownie.

I don’t recommend consuming the entire batch (although it might be hard not to) if you have weight loss goals you are working toward, but they are a great healthy indulgence when a chocolate and/or brownie craving strikes – it happens to all of us! They freeze great as well, a nice added bonus for portion control.

Additional thoughts, tips, and tricks

- I sure hope you don’t see the word chickpeas in the recipe and get turned off. Cause plain chickpeas/garbanzo beans are about one of my least favorite foods in the world to me. My mom loves them and I could never understand that. It’s the texture. But now I’ve grown to love them, as long as they are in not whole, in things like hummus, pancakes or these brownies.

If you have a high-speed blender (i.e. Blendtec * or Vitamix *) you can skip soaking the cashews. How awesome is that? But if you do, you will need to add a little water to the blender to make up for the amount of water the cashews soak up soaking.
I usually get my raw, unsalted cashews from the bulk section at my local health food store. And I get the cashew pieces if they have them, cause they are always cheaper and you’re just going to blend them anyway. But I put a little less than a cup then, since they are denser in the cup, cause I don’t want the brownies to get too dry.
You could totally put your favorite brownie frosting on these if you wanted. I think they are totally fine on their own, and way less messy, but the frosting is really good, so that’s totally up to you.
There are several ideas for substitutions in the comments.

I can tell you one substitution NOT to try – OK. This is super-embarrassing. My brother’s family only visits like once a year from Texas and they rarely come to our house when they do cause they usually are visiting with my sister-in-law’s family that lives close to us. Last summer though my wife invited them over for dinner.

I don’t know why she does this, but she tends to experiment on guests and does not plan ahead enough and make sure we have all the ingredients. She was all excited to make these brownies because my nephew can’t have gluten or dairy and she just knew he would love these.

So she goes to make them and realizes we don’t have enough cocoa powder, but we do have some weird hot cocoa mix that’s been in the cupboard for a long time. That’s totally close enough, right? Well, um. Wrong! It didn’t exactly work out. It makes the brownies end up more like soup, even after we cooked them way longer than we should have.

At least he was a good sport and ate them with a spoon and said they tasted good even though the texture was off, but we did end up throwing a lot of them away. So much for impressing the company. Oh well. At least no one gained weight or got a sugar high that day . . .

I would love to know if you try these and like them. Please comment below and let me know what you think!