Almond-Chickpea-Fava Shortbread Cookies

[jesse_the_k]

For our May prompt: nuts

runpunkrun’s recent recipe put me in the mood for shortbread. My cupboard had a packet of Bob’s Red Mill Garbanzo-Fava Bean flour rapidly approaching its sell-by date. DuckDuckGo led me to these cookies from Mia in Germany:

https://www.food.com/recipe/almond-chickpea-flour-cookies-402596

She specified chickpea flour; I substituted what I had. I am pleased to report there is nothing bean-tasting about the resulting shortbread cookies: dense, rich, and brimming with the subtle wonders of cardamom. Almond & beans means relatively high protein and low carb for a cookie.

Ingredients for 40 cookies

150g brown sugar
113g (1 US stick) butter
140g garbanzo-fava bean flour
120g almond flour
yolk of 1 (US large) egg
5 ml cardamom powder

Tools:

• Stand mixer with paddle
• Spatula
• Baking sheet and rack
• 15-ml disher

Method:

• Preheat oven to 150°C/300°F, place rack in center oven
• Lay parchment paper on baking sheet
• In mixer, cream the butter and brown sugar together until fluffy
• Separate egg, throw yolk in mixer bowl and beat until smooth
• Whisk almond flour, garbanzo-fava flour and cardamom together
• Plop in mixer bowl and mix until a coherent dough forms
• Scrape dough into ball
• Dish 20 cookies on to sheet, staggering so there’s at least 2cm between them
• Bake until golden on bottom. Recipe says 12-18 minutes; my oven was 16 minutes
• As they’re cooking dish the other 20 cookies on a plate
• Rack cool for at least 30 minutes
• Plop the prepared cookies on to the same parchment sheet, bake perfectly this time (since you learned from the first 20)

Storage

They were fine for three days on the counter in sealed container. They do harden as they age, so they get chewier.

Thoughts and variations

If you don’t have a disher, you can roll these in 3cm/1in balls and flatten slightly on pan.

I made half as-is, and the second half I made chocolate daisies. Each cookie got one dark chocolate chip pushed tip down in the center, surrounded by pushing in a ring of pepitas.

For my next try, I’m cutting back the brown sugar to 110g (because these were super sweet) and plopping a whole almond in the center.

I suspect these are descendants of Nan-e Nokhodchi, Persian cookies which use rosewater (not for me) and pistachios (I approve). I’ve seen vegan recipes which start with a can of chickpeas that’s blenderized with nut butter to substitute for the fat and egg.