Food Adventures #18: Vegan Blondies

I have never in my life cooked anything that could be considered vegan. But I saw this recipe and in the spirit of a new healthy diet and workout regimen, I decided I would go ahead and give it a try. Even weirder: the recipe called for chickpeas. Not chickpea flour- actual chickpeas. Like the beans they make hummus out of it...

At that point, I knew I had to try these things... after all, I'd never made straight up blondies- and these blondies were not only healthy, gluten-free, low in calories (the recipe says that a 'generous slab' has 70 calories. I see no reason not to believe that.) Anyway- I got the ingredients, mixed the batter:

Spread them in a pan- and cooked them!

This resulted:

Overall, I'd say these are worth another shot. I think the pan was way too big and as a result they were spread fairly thin and got a little overcooked. The other thing I did was that I substituted honey for agave nectar which I think impacted the taste a little bit. (The Missus thought there was a little bit of a bitter aftertaste- and I agree with that. It's not bad, but I'd chalk that up to either the agave nectar or the chickpeas.) I wouldn't do that again- and unless I read the recipe wrong, there was a lot of direction on the amount of chocolate chips to use. ('Lotta' is what the recipe says- so we kind of guessed on that. I'd maybe use just a touch more. Or maybe even a second banana...)

But these were good! I'd make these again.