“Healthy” Deep Dish Deliciousness!
A few months ago my sister made what she called a “healthy” deep dish chocolate chip cookie pie from the Chocolate Covered Katie healthy food blog. I wondered how a deep dish cookie pie could possibly be considered healthy. When she directed me to the recipe, I was pretty shocked to see, garbanzo beans as a primary ingredient. Ha! Garbanzo beans, what are we doing, making hummus? I bookmarked the link and moved on with my baking life. How could I make something so crazy as garbanzo bean pie?
Well, it came to pass that it was my turn to make the sweet snack at our small group. It just happened to be a friend’s 30th birthday, a friend who appreciates making a dessert healthy. We also have a friend with Celiac’s disease in the group so I figured, why not, lets try the dessert for small group, I just won’t tell anyone whats in it!
Basically, you open two cans of garbanzo beans, rinse them off and throw them, along with a few other ingredients into your food processor, process until smooth, fold in some chocolate chips, and then throw in in a spring form pan. Place that pan in the oven for around 45 min and you have yourself a deep dish chocolate chip pie! Be sure to use certified gluten free quick oats if you are trying to be “allergy” friendly. It actually looked quite beautiful sitting on my stove cooling off. Once it was cooled a bit, I popped open the spring form pan and placed the beauty on my cake stand.
When people started to arrive for small group they could not wait to dive into the pie, so I whipped up some whipped cream and cut her open! I’ve never seen a cookie pie disappear so fast! There were reactions of, “YUM!” and “This is amazing!” and the sarcastic, “Man, this is so bad, no one else should eat it, I’ll just take it off your hands because its so bad…(as they tried to steal the whole pie)” Excitedly I grabbed myself a piece. My first bite was amazing, nice and gooey, with lots of chocolate! I had to restrain myself from shoving my face into the rest of the pie and basically settled for licking my plate clean. At the end of the night, I gave the last two tiny pieces to the birthday girl and wished I had stashed a piece for myself before bed.
Next time you have a special event, make this pie, especially if you have friends who have food allergies, or even if your kids have them. You will find no eggs, dairy, or wheat here (just leave out the whipped cream)! Enjoy!
