Who doesn’t like to snack? Even if you eat filling meals, there are times when you crave a little something to keep you from fighting intense hunger until the next one. Growing up in our Southern home we called snacks or small meals something to “tide us over.”

Sometimes we desire something salty like a chip or cracker. Other times we want something sweet like a cookie. Well, I have good news. This recipe can offer a little bit of both.

There are many ways to make hummus, but you typically need a few basic ingredients to start, regardless of your intended final product of savory or sweet. Most folks begin with chickpeas (also called garbanzo beans) and tahini, a nutty, buttery, pasty substance that helps provide a lot of the smoothness we enjoy in hummus.

Tahini isn’t the easiest ingredient to find in all our local grocery stores. The one place I did find it, a small jar was $7, not friendly to my constant-cooking budget. I couldn’t justify it. So, I did a little research on some favorite fellow food blogs and discovered peanut butter is an acceptable substitute for tahini in a hummus recipe. It also fits perfectly in this particular version because the point is to create a slightly sweet and very cocoa-chocolatey treat. Otherwise, I kept the recipe on course with others I found, with just a few slight modifications.

NOTE: Many cooks even argue you should call such a mixture a “spread” because hummus, they say, actually translates quite literally to ground chickpeas. I disagree, opting for the western world definition of hummus that includes all the mixture’s ingredients.

You can serve this hummus with most plain crackers (i.e. butter or saltine), pretzels, a plain cookie (such as a vanilla wafer) or with fruit (most common, strawberries or apple slices). And other than adding the calories for those accompaniments, it’s pretty healthy at just 55 calories and 2 grams of sugar per 1/4 cup.

Dark Chocolate Hummus

Ingredients

1 15-ounce can chickpeas

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/4 cup peanut butter

1/4 cup maple syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons water

 

Directions

1. Drain the chickpeas.

2. Puree the chickpeas, peanut butter, syrup, cocoa, vanilla, salt and 2 tablespoons of the water in a food processor for about 30 seconds. Scrape down the bowl.

3. Add more syrup if you want a sweeter mixture, but be advised that the bitterness will subside just a bit once you chill the hummus in the fridge. It will still be a bit bitter like dark chocolate, however.

4. Add another 2 tablespoons of water and puree again, about a minute or two, until you get a creamy consistency.

5. Store in the fridge in an air-tight container for up to 10 days. You’ll have about 5 cups of hummus total, enough for 10 half-cup servings or 20 quarter-cup servings.