Pinterest Challenge Day 1: Healthy Cookie Dough Dip

My friend, Sam, challenged her friends to complete one of their Pinterest pins for every day they have off of work in February. I'm a stay-at-home mom, so I decided to take her challenge a step farther. I'm going to complete one of my pins every single day in February.

Assuming you've never been on Pinterest, let me quick tell you what it's about. People can pin anything they're interested in. It's almost like "liking" something on Facebook, except your whole profile is made up of your pins. People pin recipes, crafts, DIY projects for the home, gardening, and other how-tos. If you're like the average pinner, you'll end up pinning faster than you can complete the tasks! That's where Sam's challenge came in.

Today, I completed this pin: http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957066129767/. It's actually a healthy recipe that is designed to mimic eating chocolate chip cookie dough, straight from the bowl! All that's in it are beans, peanut butter, dates, oats, and chocolate chips, plus some vanilla, salt, and baking soda. To get the full recipe, just click directly on the picture from the link.

To be honest, I actually tried this recipe once before, but I did the version that uses brown sugar instead of dates. I liked it, and it was very filling, but the taste of chickpeas was extremely song. Also, I like soy milk and almost never drink regular cow's milk, but I thought the taste of soy was a little off in the cookie dough. I used that past attempt to try to improve on this one.

I decided to use white kidney beans instead of chickpeas. So much better! Chickpeas have a pretty strong flavor, and the white kidney beans are much more mild. I also subbed a few splashes of cow's milk for the soy milk, which took away more of the over-powering nutty flavor. Success!

Here's what mine looked like:

I preferred my version of her no-sugar added cookie dough over the one with sugar. It's so delicious! It tastes (and feels) almost exactly like cookie dough!

My husband came downstairs before work and caught Oliver and me each eating a small bowl full. I told him we'd made cookie dough dip. He looked at Oliver and asked, "But should he be eating it for breakfast?"
I got to proudly tell my husband that it was actually healthy, and the only questionable breakfast item in it was chocolate chips. I handed him the ingredient list as proof. He then took a taste and was quite impressed. So, in spite of the healthy, odd mix of ingredients, we all enjoyed it. I'm going to keep this one pinned to my board to be able to come back to again and again.