In other words: Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Dip. *YUM*
Since I wrote last week that I won't likely being doing many heritage recipes anymore now that I'm eating a vegan diet (to hopefully help with my chronic pain!), I had the idea to try out some vegan recipes and write about those--yes, even the "eww, weird!" ones, haha.
I'm still unsure how to structure these posts; I can't post someone else's copyrighted recipe, but I'd like to try the recipe exactly as written, which is how I was doing the heritage recipes.
So, I was thinking that in the case of copyrighted recipes, I could just list the ingredients here, and then link to the original page with the instructions; that way, people would still have to visit their site to prepare the recipe. If anyone else can think of a better way of doing it, please let me know! (Or if you have your own recipes that you don't mind me posting here--giving you credit, of course--please email them to me and I may try them and post about them.)
This first recipe in this new series was sent to me by a reader (she sent me the link) and interestingly, I already had an almost identical recipe on my blog already--from 2011! The only difference to it is the addition of oats.
I have to tell you, this sounds like such a WEIRD combination of ingredients and I wouldn't blame you for skipping past this post. However, you will be missing out. Vegan or not, this recipe is amazing! Even Eli loves it, and he likes pretty much nothing but junk food.
As far as junk food goes, this is actually the healthiest "junk food" I've ever made. While it's technically considered a dip (for apples, graham crackers, or whatnot), I prefer to eat it as is--straight from a little bowl. It's like eating raw cookie dough--peanut butter, oatmeal, and chocolate chip cookie dough.
For this recipe, I'm going to combine the two--the one on my blog from 2011 (I redirected that link here to update it) and this one that a reader sent me the link to. That way, I can share the whole recipe (since we prepare the surprise ingredient in different ways). The one that I write out here will be the one that I made yesterday (pictured above) and definitely the one you should try ;)
Since I've started eating a lot of fiber, and now that I'm eating vegan, I've not been eating many sweets at ALL. My options are so limited and it's inconvenient; also, the fiber keeps me full and satisfied. However, I had a mad craving yesterday for something sweet and I decided to take the time to make this Cookie Dough Dip (or, as I called it back in 2011, Cookie Dough Hummus).
The "secret ingredient" in this cookie dough dip is actually chick peas! (Garbanzo beans)
I swear on my life you cannot taste them.
A note on prepping the chick peas... in the recipe from Tidbits (the one that was linked above, with the oats), she uses a pressure cooker to prepare her chick peas from dried ones. I've never done that, so I can't attest to whether it's worth it; however, the reader who sent me the link to the recipe said it's absolutely worth cooking your own rather than using canned.
I don't have a pressure cooker, so I just used canned chick peas. The Tidbits recipe skips this next step, but I do it because it really does make a difference in the final texture of the dip: I peel the chick peas.
WAIT! Before you click away, it's really not that hard. Just hold a chick pea with your finger tips and then use the fingertips from your other hand to grab the chick pea and give it a gentle squeeze--the skin will come right off. It took me about 10 minutes (where I just sat and watched a TV show while peeling) to peel the whole can.
So, drain and peel the chick peas. Then, here is the recipe for the (vegan) Cookie Dough Dip:
Ingredients
1 can of chick peas, drained, peeled, and rinsed
1/4 cup of natural peanut butter (I LOVE Smucker's natural, but any kind will do)
6 Tbsp. pure maple syrup (you can try using less of this, but I used 6 Tbsp. and it was perfect)
1-1/2 tsp. vanilla
a pinch of salt (roughly 1/8 of a tsp.)
1/4 cup vegan mini chocolate chips (I have the "Enjoy Life" brand and they are great!)
1/3 cup of quick-cooking oats (NOT instant oats, like the flavored packets--but the plain, quick-cooking ones)
Directions
Drain, peel, and rinse your chick peas. This is the most tedious part, I promise.
In a food processor, add the chick peas, peanut butter, maple syrup, vanilla, and salt. Purée until very smooth--you'll have to stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl a couple of times to make sure you don't have chunks of chick peas in it.
Once it's puréed very smooth (it will have a thin consistency), move it to a bowl and put it in the fridge for about 10 minutes. Lick the spoon so you can see how tasty it is! Then remove it from the fridge and add the oats and chocolate chips. Fold those in well until it's all mixed together. Place it back in the fridge to thicken up. (If it's too thick, just add a little almond milk or soy milk or other non-dairy milk and stir well.)
From here, you can use this as a dip for fruit, graham crackers, pretzels, or even spread on toast; however, I really like to just eat it out of a small bowl. It's like eating raw cookie dough! It tastes like peanut butter-oatmeal-chocolate chip cookie dough.
You can divide it up how you like, but here is the nutritional info for the entire recipe:
Calories: 1294
Protein: 33 g.
Carbs: 177 g.
Fat: 57 g.
Fiber: 19 g.
Iron: 9 g.
(I was especially interested in the fiber and iron--that's a lot of fiber for a "cookie dough" treat!) If using this as a dip, I would guess it would make 6-8 servings. If you're just eating it as a treat from a bowl, I would say 4 servings. The total recipe made 455 grams--which makes it easy for you to divide accordingly.)
Here is a printer-friendly version of the recipe!
Overall thoughts: This vegan treat is a BIG winner! I hadn't made it in probably 10 years, so I'm really glad that a reader shared a similar recipe with me to remind me of it. I love the addition of the oats--they give it great texture.
The only problem with it is not eating the entire recipe in one sitting ;)
