Gluten-free Chickpea-Cardamom-Tahini ‘Pie’: An Accidental Recipe

4 years ago

Aram, our recent house guest, is on a gluten-free diet.
While he and his wife Tricia were here, Aram and I experimented making a
gluten-free crust for lahmajoun and gluten free simit. (Coming soon in a
separate post.)

After Aram and Tricia left for home, I purchased the Sadaf
brand of chickpea flour with the idea of making the gluten-free cookie recipe on the back of
the product’s bag and sharing the recipe with Aram.

The company’s recipe is as follows:

Chickpea Cookies

Yield: 36 pieces

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter

1 ½ cups powdered sugar

2 tsp. ground cardamom

3 ½ cups sifted fine chick-pea flour

Directions:

Melt butter over low heat.
Combine powdered sugar and
cardamom in a large bowl. Mix melted butter into the sugar-spice mixture until
creamy.
Add chickpea flour, stirring constantly, to produce dough.

Chickpea dough

Knead well for 10 minutes. Cover and set aside for 2 hours; do not refrigerate.
Preheat oven to 300°F. Roll dough to ¼ inch thickness on a
large plate. Cut out cookies with tiny cookie cutters.
Place the cookies 1-inch apart on a greased baking sheet.
Bake for 10-15 minutes or until slightly golden.
Remove from oven, cool and carefully put on a serving plate.

I followed the recipe to a “T” through step #3. Once the two hours were up, I tried to lift the ball of dough out of the bowl, but it
crumbled into a heap!

Crumbled chickpea dough

There was NO way I would be able to roll the dough as
suggested in step #4.

What to do? I scooped up the crumbles and put them into a
mixing bowl. Put about 1+ Tbsp. water and 2 Tbsp. of well-stirred tahini into
the dry, crumbly mass. I gently mixed it together with my hands, making sure
all was combined. The consistency was similar to a thick brownie batter.

Using an 8-inch glass pie pan which I lightly greased, I pressed the mixture into
the pan. I used the back of a fork to create a pattern on the surface and added
a few pistachio nuts as a garnish.

Chickpea ‘pie’ – before baking

The dessert baked for about 25 minutes at
350°F.

Baked Chickpea-Cardamom-Tahini ‘Pie’

The dessert had to cool completely before serving. Note: The longer it sat,
the easier it was to slice and serve.

Candy-coated chickpeas

How did it taste? If you’ve ever eaten candy-coated chick
peas, that should give you an idea. It was sweet, without being too sweet, with
a hint of cardamom and tahini.
It was actually pretty good, especially with a cup of coffee!