Pinday: Stop What You're Doing And Make This!

Oh my stars in heaven above.  I had other recipes I was going to feature for this week's Pinday, but as soon as I tried this one, it jumped to the front of the line!  Let me preface this by saying that I have a serious sweet tooth, especially for rich, chewy things, and cookie dough may be my all-time biggest weakness.  However, because of my personal struggles with food and weight, cookie dough is just never a good choice for me.  Ever.  But then this week I saw a friend pin this recipe with the caption "Tastes like cookie dough, but it's HEALTHY???"  I just had to click, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing!

Back in my South Beach Diet days, I sometimes would make black bean brownies, which would fool lots of people who would never have guessed they were made with beans instead of flour.  So I cracked up to find a cookie dough recipe made with beans!!!  Ha!  Why had I never thought of this before?!!?!

Now the original pin linked to one recipe, but then in that recipe, she also linked to an even healthier version that wasn't quite as good.  I thought I'd try the healthier one first, though, because if I liked it, then I wouldn't know what I was missing with the less-healthy one.  And it was AWESOME!  The first one uses peanut butter, where the second one uses applesauce, so the second is much lower fat.  So here's the lower-fat recipe and my photo:

Blondie Batter Dip

• 1 1/2 cups chickpeas (1 can, drained) (250g)
• heaping 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 1-2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup plus 3T nondairy milk (or more or less, as needed… start out with less)
• Sweetener (see note below, for amount)
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips
• Optional: I add 1/4 cup flaxmeal for omega 3s and a fun texture

Add all ingredients (except for chocolate chips) to a blender or food processor, and blend until very smooth. Then mix in the chocolate chips.
Sweetener Notes: I used 2/3 cup brown sugar when I made this for the party (*but I also used the higher-fat version). I’ve also used stevia before. And liquid sweeteners (agave, maple, etc.) are fine as well.

In my recipe, I used regular skim milk, splenda for sweetener (I used 1/4 cup, but it was too much.), and I didn't have chocolate chips, so I chopped up some truffle candy I had on hand.  I did add the flaxmeal, too.  It was absolutely delicious, and Justin tried it and thought it was excellent too.  I was surprised to discover that I couldn't eat the whole thing in one sitting - half was plenty, and the rest kept just fine in the fridge.

One thing I will do differently next time (besides having real chocolate chips!) is I'll use my stick blender to blend it well.  It was too thick for my Magic Bullet to process well, so I had too many whole chickpeas left in there.

I was curious about how this recipe would follow the guidelines of certain diets.  As long as you use a calorie-free sweetener and 60% dark cocoa chocolate chips, it would be South Beach Diet friendly for phase 2, and half of the recipe would be 8 Weight Watchers Plus Points.  I think that's definitely ok for an occasional treat!!!!!  So maybe I don't have to say goodbye to cookie dough forever after all!