Gluten free chocolate cookies made with chickpea flour! They’re surprisingly excellent, with a nice texture and a nice chocolate flavour. Obviously healthy-ish, lightly sweetened with maple syrup, but definitely a treat.
With the new recipe update, they are very much like flourless brownie cookies, and the texture is significantly improved. There are still some notes to keep in mind with these (mostly with chickpea flour and liquid) so take a look at the notes section below if it’s your first time making the cookies.
Because I don’t follow a gluten-free diet, I really aim to get the perfect texture on any GF recipes I share – if it’s not as good or better than a spelt version, it isn’t posted. These are really, really good.
If you don’t want to buy chickpea flour just for this, I have several recipes on OE that use it – sweet potato latkes, strawberry rhubarb crisp, and you can always make socca. It’s great for binding and thickening, and works well in veggie burgers (like in these black bean meatballs) and sauces.
Ingredients
Ingredient Notes and Substitutions
- Chickpea flour: this can be found with South Asian foods either at the grocery store, in specialty shops, or online. It will be marked as chickpea, gram, besan, or garbanzo flour.
- Cocoa powder: use either cacao or baking cocoa, either work here. Cocoa makes a richer, darker cookie. Make sure you’re using cocoa and not cocoa drink mix – there shouldn’t be any sugar, milk solids, etc. in the ingredient list.
- Vanilla: I use vanilla powder because extract is prohibitively expensive here. Use a teaspoon of extract in place of the vanilla powder and whisk it in to the liquid ingredients. No vanilla? Use cinnamon or another spice you like instead.
- Maple syrup: for this recipe, maple syrup, honey, and date syrup can all be used interchangeably in the same amounts. Maple syrup will make a very slightly less sweet cookie and honey is rather sweeter, so it’s a good way to adjust based on your sweet tooth without adding to the ingredients. I particularly like date syrup in these.
- An egg: I haven’t successfully made these without egg, but you can try these vegan chocolate tahini cookies for a good alternative. There are some comments laying out vegan options (e.g. using a chia egg) but since this isn’t a vegan website and I haven’t found the vegan versions satisfactory, I don’t have a tried and true sub.
Step by Step
1. Mix the dough: whisk the dry ingredient to break up any clumps, then mix the wet ingredients in.
2. Add chocolate: stir in the chopped chocolate to incorporate. Don’t worry too much about over-mixing.
3. Transfer: scoop the cookie dough out onto the prepared baking sheet, about two tablespoons each, for nine cookies.
4. Bake: bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the tops of the cookies are cracked and the edges are just firm to the touch.
Recipe Notes
Chickpea flour varies pretty significantly from brand to brand and it’s important to take a good look at the texture of the cookie dough after mixing. It should be just like regular cookie dough in consistency and very glossy in appearance.
If the dough is dry, which will be the most common issue, then add a tablespoon of non-dairy milk, mix, and add more if needed, mixing between each addition. If it’s your first time using chickpea flour then it may be worthwhile to use a slightly lesser amount of flour and add more as needed to get the same texture as pictured above.
Don’t be tempted to reduce the amount of coconut oil – they texture is poor with a lesser amount. I know it’s a bit high for one of my recipes but these are very well worth it.
How to Store
Storage: keep in a sealed container at room temperature for 3-5 days.
Freezing: place fully cooled cookies in an airtight container and freeze for up to three months.
Expert Tips
- Line the sheet: these do stick a little to the baking sheet, so I recommend lining over greasing for this recipe.
- Don’t taste the raw dough: the chocolate covers up the chickpea flour taste completely BUT it’s very important not to taste the raw dough and try to avoid smelling it, too. Wet chickpea flour smells awful and you might be tempted to toss it if you taste it before baking.
- Don’t over-bake: if over-baked, the cookies will be dry and cake-y, so err to the side of under-baking if unsure.
- Mix the oil and syrup: this helps to cool the coconut oil down further in case it’s still warm and prevent any egg scrambling, so you don’t have to wait for the oil to cool.
- Use room temperature ingredients: I keep my eggs on the counter and always forget to mention this, but it should be at room temperature for this recipe for the best results. To quickly bring an egg up to room temp, submerge it in warm water for five minutes.
More Gluten-Free Desserts
Vegan Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
Almond Flour Brownies
Chocolate Hazelnut Tart
Almond Chocolate Chunk Cookies
If you make these Chickpea Cookies or any other dairy-free cookie recipes on Occasionally Eggs, please take a moment to rate the recipe and leave a comment below. It’s such a help to others who want to try the recipe. For more OE, follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, purchase the Occasionally Eggs cookbook, or subscribe for new posts via email.
Double Chocolate Chickpea Flour Cookies
Description
Ingredients
- 110 grams (¾ cup) chickpea flour besan/gram flour
- 25 grams (¼ cup) natural cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon vanilla powder or 1 teaspoon extract
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- 80 grams (⅓ cup) coconut oil, melted
- 80 ml (⅓ cup) maple syrup or honey
- 1 large egg room temperature
- 100 grams (½ cup) dark chocolate, chopped
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, vanilla, and salt.110 grams (¾ cup) chickpea flour, 25 grams (¼ cup) natural cocoa powder, ½ teaspoon baking soda, ½ teaspoon vanilla powder, ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- In another dish, whisk the coconut oil and maple syrup, then add the egg and whisk again until fully combined.80 grams (⅓ cup) coconut oil, melted, 80 ml (⅓ cup) maple syrup, 1 large egg
- Stir the coconut oil mixture into the flour mixture, mixing until no streaks of flour remains. Stir in the chocolate to evenly incorporate.100 grams (½ cup) dark chocolate, chopped
- Scoop the dough, around 2 tablespoons per cookie, onto the baking sheet. Flatten each cookie slightly with your palm (wet your hands to prevent sticking).
- Bake for 8-10 minutes or until the tops are cracked and the edges are just firmed. Don’t over-bake.
- Cool the cookies for ten minutes on the pan before removing and cooling completely on a rack. They’ll keep in an airtight container for at least three days and freeze well.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition is provided as a courtesy and is an estimate. If this information is important to you, please have it verified independently.
This post was originally published in February 2018. It has been updated with improvements to the recipe, and new photos and text, as of October 2020.
These were pretty good. It cured my sweet craving. I added walnuts and used Walden Farms maple walnut syrup. Wished I used just a little bit more of it. But I will make these again. Thank you so much for sharing.
Hi Rita, I looked up the syrup you used and it’s not real maple syrup, but a flavoured artificially-sweetened syrup. This won’t work as a 1:1 switch for maple syrup or honey so I would do a little experimentation to see what works for you when using it in future!
My goodness! Amazing… getting quickly obsessed! Thank you for the awesome recipe!!
This recipe is fantastic! Thank you so much! We all love it! You can not tell there is cheakpea!
I follow this recipe except I replaced the egg with a flax seed egg, and the cocoa with cacao. The mixure was more cake like, so i added another 3/4 cups of cacao and they turned out great. A little on the less sweet side but i dont mind that. The texture was great and the outside was crunchy. I also cooked them in my airfryer 10 minutes at 150 degree celcius.