Blondie mini muffins

I have a blogger friend Celine who has a gorgeous Vegan recipe site. (Have cake will travel). She made these amazing looking blondies using of all things, chickpeas! I have no fear using strange ingredients to make things. I’ve added tofu to muffins I’ve made; I’ve used black beans to make brownies, etc…

I wanted to try to make them, but I didn’t have a square pan for baking them in, so I decided to make them into mini muffins. I adapted her recipe just a tad because she used brown rice flour, whereas I used all purpose flour. When I told my kids the ingredients, they were pretty skeptical. I said, “They have a can of chick peas, peanut butter and jelly!” They weren’t excited! Either way they turned out great. And, of course I had to add a few chocolate chips to each one before baking!

1 can (15 oz.) cooked garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup raw sugar ( I just used regular sugar)
1/2 cup strawberry all fruit spread
1/4 cup crunchy natural peanut butter
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup plus 2TB. flax meal
2 TB. all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly coat an 8 inch square baking pan with spray. (or mini muffin tin) In a food processor, combine all the ingredients and blend until perfectly smooth, scraping sides often. (I don’t have a food processor, so I used my blender).Pour the batter into the prepared pan. (Or Mini Muffin tin). Cook for 12-15 minutes (for mini muffins) OR 26 minutes into an 8 inch pan coated with cooking spray. Let cool for at least 5 minutes before attempting to remove them from the pan. I chose not to use paper muffin liners, because I hate when muffins stick to the paper. They didn’t stick to the muffin tin at all. The inside is all gooey and yummy. Just the few chocolate chips gave it another level of yumminess.

Each mini muffin is 72 calories, .25 grams of fat and .25 grams of fiber.

If your kids are younger, just call them “chocolate chip muffins” and they will never know there are garbanzo beans and other healthy stuff in it!

Here is the link to Celine’s original recipe And…of course, her photography is awesome! Here are her blondies if you make them in a pan instead of muffins.