Healthy gingerbread chickpea blondies

It can be so hard to find healthy snacks at Christmas time. These healthy gingerbread chickpea blondies tick all the boxes. Made with chickpeas and nut or seed butter they’re packed full of protein making a delicious and nutritious snack.

I have made chickpea blondies before – and my chickpea and peanut butter blondies are really popular with my kids. When I was brainstorming ideas for healthy Christmas snacks I just knew that these were the perfect contender for a festive adaptation. And I was right. In fact I think that these healthy gingerbread blondies are even better than the original version.

What are chickpea blondies?

A traditional blondie is a lighter version of a brownie. It’ll be made with eggs, sugar, butter and flour and could be flavoured with vanilla. A chickpea blondie on the other hand is quite a different beast. It’s much healthier and instead of using flour, eggs and butter uses a simple tin of chickpeas and some nut butter. 

These blondies are free from eggs and dairy making them suitable for vegans. They’re also refined sugar free, although they do contain maple syrup. I have made several different versions of these blondies. For the maximum ginger taste I like to add a couple of pieces of stem ginger, chopped up finely, with a tablespoon of syrup from the jar. This obviously adds a little refined sugar to the recipe so do leave it out if you prefer – they are still delicious.

I like to make these with sunflower seed butter so that they’re suitable for my son to take to school in his lunchbox. It can be hard to make healthy bakes without using nuts so if you’re looking for nut free lunchbox ideas I’ve got 20 here.

Baking with sunflower seed butter

There’s only one problem with using sunflower seed butter and that is that the natural chlorophyll in the seeds reacts with the raising agent and turns the blondies green in the middle once they’ve cooled. This doesn’t seem to happen if you put them straight in the freezer and adding a splash of lemon juice is said to help too – I’ll experiment with my next batch. I did quite a lot of online research about this and despite the green appearance they’re totally fine to eat. If this puts you off then use nut butter instead. 

I used Meridian sunflower seed butter* – you can buy this on Amazon or in some health food shops. If you’d like to make your own sunflower seed butter then My Fussy Eater has a great and very easy sounding recipe.

Another great thing about these healthy gingerbread chickpea blondies is that they can be frozen. I’ve been adding them to my freezer stash for lunch boxes and last minute treats. I just take them out of the freezer in the morning and they’re fully defrosted by lunchtime. 

Here’s how to make healthy gingerbread chickpea blondies:

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Healthy gingerbread blondies

It can be so hard to find healthy snacks at Christmas time. These healthy gingerbread blondies tick all the boxes. Made with chickpeas and nut or seed butter they’re packed full of protein making a delicious and nutritious snack.

Course Snack

Cuisine International

Keyword healthy gingerbread

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 30 minutes

Servings 9

Author Mandy Mazliah

Ingredients

• 75 g oats
• 1 x 400g tin of chickpeas drained
• 170 g jar of sunflower seed butter or nut butter see note above about sunflower seed butter
• 75 g maple syrup
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2 pieces of stem ginger chopped (optional)
• 1 tbsp syrup from the jar of stem ginger optional

Instructions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (fan)/200°C/gas mark 6.
2. Grease a 20cm square baking tin and line with non-stick baking paper.
3. Place the oats in your food processor and grind until you have a rough, flour-like consistency.
4. Add all the remaining ingredients and pulse until well combined.
5. Scrape out into the baking tin and smooth the top.
6. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
7. Allow to cool in the tin and then cut into squares.

If you like this you might like these 15 best vegan cookbooks (over on my vegan food blog cookveggielicious.com), these cooking gifts for kids or one of my other Christmas recipes such as these nut free coconut snowballs, this healthy chickpea gingerbread or this healthier Christmas rocky road.

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