These Healthy Peanut Butter Blondies are gluten-free, dairy-free, refined-sugar free and vegan friendly! Made with chickpeas but you’d never know it! It’s the perfect healthy dessert recipe that you can feel great about indulging in!
This recipe was originally posted on March 31st, 2016. The photos have been updated and a video has been added to give an old favorite a little facelift!
Today I'm sharing a recipe with you that has been 2 years in the making. These Healthy Peanut Butter Blondies are a dessert you can feel great about eating! As you know by now...I always have some sort of healthy dessert on hand or just coming out of the oven in my house.
I have this habit that I can't don't want to kick, of sitting down and having a legit dessert every night after dinner. However, I would like to live past 45, so I love making treats that taste indulgent but are actually good for you, like these chickpea blondies! One of my favorite ways to achieve this goal is by using beans in place of flour in baked goods!
Chickpea Blondies?!
These healthy peanut butter blondies use chickpeas instead of flour and peanut butter in place of butter or oil. I know what you're thinking, there are so many chickpea peanut butter recipes out there, what makes this one different?
I've tried (and liked) many of those recipes, but there's something about this one that just did it for me. I really love the combination of honey and coconut sugar as the sweetener, and the addition of 1 TBS of almond milk really made the texture perfect! This recipe ended my search for a delicious, healthy, peanut butter cookie that's high in protein and fiber!
These healthy peanut butter blondies are also vegan-friendly (no eggs)! So you can {and will want to!} lick the Vitamix clean without a care in the world! Yay! I love adding a touch of sea salt to the top of these before baking them....you can't go wrong with sweet and salty!
How to Make Healthy Peanut Butter Blondies
This vegan blondies recipe is SO easy! Simply toss everything (except the chocolate chips) into the container of your Vitamix (or other high-powered blender or food processor) and blend away! It takes 5 minutes to put together and 30 minutes to bake. Which means that you can have a delicious dessert ready to go in no time!
- Room temperature. One thing to note is that these blondies blend the easiest when all the ingredients are at room temperature. If you're using a solid peanut butter, I recommend melting it a touch before putting it in your blender. Rinse the chickpeas with warm water, and let the almond milk warm up a bit at room temperature too!
Healthy Peanut Butter Blondies: Substitutions
Like I said earlier, I tweaked and tested this recipe many, many times before deciding to share it with the world. So I recommend making it exactly as written. However, if you must, here are a few possible substitutions! 🙂
- Chickpeas. Great Northern Beans {aka: white beans, aka: Cannellini beans} also work well in this recipe! However, chickpeas (aka: garbanzo beans} are my favorites!
- Peanut butter. I honestly have never tried this recipe with any other nut or seed butter, but I am guessing that any all-natural variety would work very well!
- Honey. Use pure maple syrup for a vegan variety!
- Coconut sugar. Any granulated sugar works well in this recipe. I prefer coconut sugar because it is unrefined and tastes amazing!
- Almond milk. Any non-dairy or regular dairy-full milk works excellently in this recipe! I have also used non-dairy creamer with yummy results too!
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Healthy Peanut Butter Blondies
Ingredients
- 1 15 oz can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), rinsed and drained
- ½ cup peanut butter
- ¼ cup honey can substitute maple syrup for a vegan option
- ¼ cup coconut sugar
- 1 TBS almond milk
- 2 tsp vanilla
- ½ tsp sea salt
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- ½ cup chocolate chips
- extra sea salt & chocolate chips for the top
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8" or 9" glass baking pan and set aside.
- Put all ingredients except for chocolate chips into your blender (Vitamix) or food processor. I highly recommend a great blender like the Vitamix so you get a perfectly smooth consistency.
- Blend until creamy and smooth.
- Once smooth, add chocolate chips and mix by hand.
- Pour mixture into your prepared pan and spread out evenly.
- Sprinkle a few more chocolate chips and sea salt on top.
- Bake in your preheated oven for 20-30 mintues until the edges just pull away from the pan, the top is set and slightly golden brown.
- Let cool for at least 15 minutes, then enjoy!
- Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. You can eat them cold or warm in the microwave for 15 seconds to regain the fresh-from-the-oven deliciousness!
Video
Nutrition
Question: have you tried baking with beans?! If so, how did you like it?
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Laura
I used lakanto monkfruit sugar, lakanto maple syrup and Lily sugar free chocolate chips. Before it was baked I was hesitant to taste it due to the knowledge it was garbanzo beans... but it was yummy, like cookie dough. After baking, I wasn't sure about how it tasted, but it actually grew on me after a few bites and find it a good alternative to dessert. I still think I liked it better unbaked. I'm looking forward to trying your other recipes.
Jill
Wow’. Amazing!
Why do they need to be refrigerated?
Angie
I replaced the almond milk with the liquid in the chickpea can and was happy with the results. Since only 1 TBS is required, I’m guessing the almond milk is for consistency more than flavor .
Sarah Goodner
These are amazing! If I hadn't made them myself, I'd never know that the base was chickpeas. They are very soft, so just expect that they are warm, gooey, delicious treats. I tricked my kids into eating "dessert" for dinner!