Eating Beans As Dessert?!

A few weeks ago, my boss sent a newsletter from our health insurance and one of the featured articles was how certain beans can help lower cholesterol. I was intrigued so I did more research on it. High on the list of good cholesterol-lowering beans was kidney, navy, pinto, black, chickpea (garbanzo), or butter (lima). Only a cup of any of those beans a day is said to lower cholesterol by as much as 10 percent in 6 weeks!

So off I went to search Pinterest. Usually, I would just Google recipes but I've found that Pinterest is pretty good about showing me stuff that other people have already tried and liked without having to wade through pages of comments in multiple recipes. What I stumbled across multiple times was a  "No Sugar Cookie Dough Dip"  and a Cookie Dough Dip from Chocolate Covered Katie.

"No Sugar" Cookie Dough Dip

cookie dough dip

The first few times I saw it, I figured someone had just mistyped when they pinned (which happens so irritatingly often). The third time though, the caption on the pin explained that the dip was made with chickpeas. What?! A dessert snack made with beans? I had to try it.

I decided to try the "No Sugar" version first. I was so happy when I read through the recipe to see that it didn't use Stevia or some other "sweetener". It used dates. The majority of this dip is beans, dates, and chocolate chips. There's a titch of peanut butter and just a dash of baking soda, salt, and vanilla.

I strayed from the recipe on a few things. I had a bag of beans so instead of canned, I soaked & boiled 135g (the equivalent to 1 1/2 cups, which is what you get out of a 250g can). I used regular chocolate chips instead of the sugar-free option of cocoa nibs. I also didn't add oats or milk. I don't have a food processor but I do have a "handy chopper" so I pureed it in small batches.

So how did it taste?

It does not taste like cookie dough but it is so sweet. The texture is a little "beany" but that is more than likely a result of not using the food processor (which she warned about). It was good though, and eaten with 2 graham cracker rectangles, satiated my 3:00 dessert craving every day. I ate 2/8 of the batch as soon as it was finished and had some pretty severe stomach cramps for a little bit. I entered the recipe into Sparkpeople.com and found out I'd eaten 18 grams of fiber within 30 minutes. No wonder I had stomach cramps! I portioned the rest of the batch out to 6 servings for the rest of the week. It's an easy and delicious way to incorporate more beans into my daily intake!

Nutritional info as entered on Sparkpeople.com

I'm going to make it again tonight for this week's dessert cravings. This time though, I'm making the other version which uses brown sugar as sweetener - and I'm thinking that will make it taste more like cookie dough. I think I'll go ahead and throw the oats & milk in there too. I'll be sure to post next week and let you know how it went!