Cinnamon Spiked Chickpea Flour Breakfast Bars

This recipe is the result of a friend looking out for me. My Housemate and good friend Jenna, knew I was on the hunt for a delicious use for my chickpea flour. While I have had one success, it has been mostly failures. On Sunday, she sent me a link to a recipe on the Edible Perspective. It was for a gluten-free "bread." I knew immediately I wanted to make it and made it later on that day.

I made minor tweaks mostly due to what I had on hand. The original recipe was gluten-free, but with my wheat bran addition these are no longer gluten-free. The texture resonated with me as more of a "bar" so that is what I am calling it.

Cinnamon Spiked Chickpea Flour Breakfast Bars slightly adapted from the Edible Perspective

3/4 cup chickpea flour
1/2 cup oat flour
1/8 tsp salt
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp olive oil
1/6 cup chopped dates
1/6 cup white chocolate chips
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup wheat bran
1 cup water

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Combine all ingredients in order and stir to combine.
3. Pour into a well greased 9x9 pan
4. Bake for 35-45 minutes until crackers and browned on the edges.

These seemed a bit more crumbly than those from the Edible Perspective, but I'm sure it has to do with the bran addition, or the olive oil substitution for coconut oil. I have to get my hands on some of that stuff.

I was a bit hesitant to replace the buckwheat flour (which I didn't have) with more chickpea flour as I thought I would find the chickpea flavour overbearing. I also wanted to make sure it was sweet enough for me based on my past experiences with chickpea flour. That is why I made sure to replace the dried fruit I didn't have with some chocolate chips. On my first bite I wasn't too sure but it really grew on me. It is great with peanut butter on top, and made a great quick breakfast for this busy week. Also, do not be shy with the cinnamon! I am happy to report, that with this recipe, I polished off 2 mason jars of pantry items! Again, it felt like checking off items on a to do list.

This will be my last post before I head off to Italy. I will not be blogging during my trip. Upon my return I will be finishing my move back into my parent's house, but hopefully I will be able to bring you a new post with a new recipe shortly after my return. While I won't be blogging, I will be tweeting, so you can follow me @foodforfuel to keep up to date!

See you in September! (wow, already?!?)

Banana Chocolate Chip Chickpea Flour Pancakes

In about 5 weeks, I will have completed part of my research study for my Master's thesis, move out of my current house and into my parent's house, and depart for Italy for a 2 week trip with my Nonna and cousin. I am really excited for it all to happen, but I feel like a lot needs to happen in the next 5 weeks. One thing that needs to happen is that I need to use up a lot of my pantry and freezer items. This will not only make my move easier, but I will reduce the risk of wasting food and I will save some money. I am going to start making the conscious effort to use up what I have and attempt to make-due rather than taking those oh so tempting grocery trips.

What have I done in the past few days to accomplish this:

1. I made some granola. I made a version similar to the crunchy quinoa granola, but I added some oats and different nuts.
I have lots of yogurt in the fridge that needs to get eaten in the next week or two. Normally I add some fruit and I am good to go. However, I want to save some of those frozen berries for in the future when I may not have any fresh fruit available to me. Plain yogurt is a bit boring on it's own however so I made this high protein and fairly low sugar granola. It also used up lots of nuts that I had as well as some dried cranberries which I will not eat on their own.

2. Used up that big bag of frozen vegetable scraps.
For the past few months, I had been keeping some veggie scraps in a ziploc bag in the freezer. It had a little bit of everything. I kept aspargus ends, parsnip tops, carrot peelings, bruised zucchini, mushroom stems, and wilted celery. I had been doing this since I wrote this post on wasting less food, but I have not kept everything. I figured it was about time to make the vegetable stock I was keeping these veggies for. Soup is literally the last thing I would want to be making this time of year, but it had to be done. I will write about making vegetable stock in the near future, and what I end up using it for.

3. Developed a yummy pancake recipe using chickpea flour.
Once my oats run out, pancakes are the next order of business for breakfast, which will also help with using up some flour. However, I'd like to save my wheat flour for baking bread, and I have a lot of chickpea flour to play with. I wanted to figure out a good recipe that is quick and also delicious. After first trying chickpea pancakes with blueberries, I knew I needed to up the sweet factor if I was going to enjoy them for breakfast. My first try was a great success and after one more tweak I have settled on the following recipe.

Banana Chocolate Chip Chickpea Flour Pancakes
serves 1

1/2 cup chickpea flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup vanilla soy milk (I think the sweetened soy milk might be neccessary)
1 banana, chopped
1 tbsp dark chocolate chips - an extra tbsp doesn't hurt ;)

1. Whisk together the first three ingredients.
2. Slowly add the soy milk, whisking in to remove any clumps.
3. Stir in the banana and chocolate chips.
4. Heat a greased pan on medium heat, and add 1/4 of the batter to the pan (I like to cover the pan). Once the bubbles no longer close up, it is time to flip the pancake. After 2 minutes or so the pancake should be about done.
5. I eat them plain or with a bit of almond butter on top.

These pancakes are really good, especially the bites which have lots of banana and chocolate. I have a feeling the use of the chickpea flour is an acquired taste, and definitely needs to be sweetened to be used as a pancake flour. I have been having these for breakfast for the past few days and have really been enjoying them. It is a great way to use up my chickpea flour as well as some frozen bananas kicking around. If you don't like banana, adding a tbsp or two of coconut is also good.

Sweet Potato Enchilada Grain-Free Pizza

A while ago I made these enchiladas from Oh She Glows (without the cilantro avocado sauce). I brought them along to a Cinco de Mayo party, and then made them again a week later, substituting refried beans for the black beans, and adding some corn. It is a really fantastic recipe that I recommend you try. The second time I made them, I also attempted to make my own chickpea tortillas to use for the enchiladas. This turned out to be more of a chickpea crepe which I filled with the enchilada filling. Not quite an enchilada but still tasted good, in a different way.

I bought a huge bag of chickpea flour that was on sale after making the tortillas, as I saw a lot of potential in this high protein, gluten-free flour. My second venture with the chickpea flour was blueberry pancakes (omitting the sugar), which I was not a fan of. I think I will be sticking to the savoury flavours for chickpea flour. Next, I purposefully made chickpea crepes, which were delicious with avocado and scrambled eggs.

In order to escape the pancake/crepe rut I seemed to be in, I conducted a google search and found a recipe for Socca, similar to a pizza crust. Since I had enchilada filling in the freezer, I figured this would be a perfect topping for chickpea flour crust pizza. I followed the recipe on Food and Wine since it was more tailored to what I wanted to do.

It did not turn out so great. The first slice was kind of good, but after that, it was all downhill. I think the problem was that I didn't get it crispy enough. The middle was too mushy and had a bad texture. I think a good idea would be to actually make a crispy chickpea tortilla (like a flat hardshell taco shell) and then add the toppings and a quick broil. I think I also need to learn how to season the batter a bit better. All I have been doing is adding some cumin. I wonder if adding rosemary, pepper, basil and oregano would be a good bet? Of course, topping it with tomatoes, cheese, garlic, etc would work better instead of enchilada filling with that herb combination.

All I know is that I am not ready to give up on chickpea flour. I am discouraged, but I will not let that huge bag of flour go to waste. Anyone know of any good uses for chickpea flour? Anyone have any ideas? I almost refuse to believe that I have a distaste for chickpea flour, and must find a way that I will enjoy using it.

Before I close off this post I would like to draw your attention to the new look of the blog! If you are viewing this through email or a reader, I suggest you check out the site's new look. A friend of mine designed a logo for me and I think it looks great! It goes nice with the blog theme, and I think the sun is an excellent symbol for Food for Fuel. The sun is ultimately the energy source for the food that we eat, and since I feature mostly vegetarian recipes, these foods are as close as we can get to that source of energy. Kind of lovely when you think about it.