I found this unusual recipe on a website specialising in grains, peas and beans grown in the UK. Hodmedods is a company in Beccles, Suffolk; the name is a dialect word that means snail in Suffolk, but hedgehog in Norfolk! It can refer to anything that curls up really!
I was inspired to try using pea flour as it is much better for avoiding a blood glucose ‘spike’ than ordinary wheat flour. A few months ago I was told that I was pre diabetic, which at the time was quite a shock. I’ve been on quite a steep learning curve since then, finding substitutes for all kinds of foods.
Green pea flour is naturally gluten free, so if that is a concern for you then this could be a good substitute. It’s higher in protein than wheat flour, and this is part of the reason it’s better than regular flour at glucose control. It is a very pretty pale green colour, and smelled lightly of fresh peas. Neither of these qualities were evident in the final product though!
I followed the recipe on the website, which can be found by clicking here. I used 85% dark chocolate, and swapped half the sugar for a substitute ‘sugar’ erythritol.
They were easy to make, although I gave up trying to stir it all up with a spoon, and ended up using my hands to get the dough together, and shape the 12 balls. The recipe stated to make all 12 on one baking sheet, but I’m glad I ignored that and did them in 2 batches of 6. Otherwise I think they would have all stuck together.
Everything mixed up as I would expect, and baked within the time frame stated (14 minutes). Taste verdict: very very acceptable! Maybe not in the top ten of chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever made or eaten. But as pretty much every other type would increase my blood glucose too fast and for too long I’ll take them!
You may be wondering how I know that they won’t have that effect. Well of course I don’t know for certain, because I don’t wear a blood glucose monitor. However last year I joined the Zoe Project which did involve using a monitor for 2 weeks, and also various tests. The report I got back was very interesting, and enlightening. The Zoe app allows me to input recipes and get a score out of 100 ( the higher the better). So I entered the ingredients for these cookies.
Overall the cookies scored 45. Compared to a classic chocolate Hobnob – scoring 1 – that seems pretty good to me! Not as good as a handful of pistachios on their own – scoring 100 – but for a chocolate cookie I think that’s more than acceptable.
I have never made anything with pea flour before, and I’m looking forward to trying some more recipes. Apparently it can be used pretty much anywhere normal flour is used.
Anyway – moral of the story – it’s never too late to find out new stuff!
Eat Cake And Run 