Double Chocolate Chickpea Flour Cookies

Double chocolate gluten free cookies made with chickpea flour! They’re surprisingly excellent, with a nice texture and a nice chocolate flavour. Obviously healthy-ish but definitely a treat despite being little grain free protein bombs.

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 tips 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.

Scroll to the bottom of the post or click “skip to recipe” above to see the recipe card with full ingredient measurements and instructions.

Ingredients

• Chickpea flour
• Cocoa powder
• Baking soda
• Sea salt
• Vanilla (see substitutions)
• Coconut oil
• Maple syrup, honey, or date syrup (see substitutions)
• An egg
• Dark chocolate

Method

Melt the coconut oil and set it aside to cool slightly. Preheat the oven and line a baking sheet with parchment (these do stick a little, so lining is needed). Whisk the chickpea flour, cocoa, baking soda, vanilla (if using powder), and salt in a large bowl. Make sure you whisk enough to break up any clumps of chickpea flour.

In another dish, whisk together the coconut oil and maple syrup. This helps to cool the coconut oil down further in case it’s still warm and prevent any egg scrambling. Whisk in the egg (and vanilla extract if using).

Stir the coconut oil mixture into the flour mixture until no streaks of flour are visible. The dough should be thick but not stiff and very glossy looking. Stir in the chocolate to incorporate.

Scoop the cookie dough out onto the prepared baking sheet, about two tablespoons each, for nine cookies. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the tops of the cookies are cracked and the edges are just firm to the touch.

If over-baked, the cookies will be dry and cake-y, so err to the side of under-baking if unsure. Cool for about ten minutes on the pan before cooling fully on a rack.

Tips and 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.

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 dump it if you taste it before baking.

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.

If you don’t want to buy chickpea flour just for this, I have several recipes on the blog 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.

Substitutions

I use vanilla powder because extract is prohibitively expensive here and I can’t get liquor right now to make my own. 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.

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.

I haven’t successfully made these without egg, but you can try these vegan flourless 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.

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.

More Gluten-Free Desserts

Vegan Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
Almond Flour Brownies
Chocolate Hazelnut Tart
Almond Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Chocolate Chunk, Raspberry, and Almond Cake

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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.