Meet In Your Kitchen | Marta Greber's Chocolate Chickpea Cookies for Breakfast
This post is part of my Meet in My Kitchen podcast: How did we get to where we are in life & what does food have to do with it
"Food is comfort. Food makes me happy." - Marta Greber
Marta is an adventurer - driven by curiosity and trust. She explored New Zealand in a camper van with her 2-year old daughter and even when the van broke in the middle of nowhere she felt they were safe. She travelled around South America on her own, taking precautions and cutting her hair short as matches and adorning her face with not the cutest glasses to cause anything but attraction. Marta avoids risks but she doesn't miss a chance when she sees it. Australia, South East Asia, Europe, there isn't really a dirt road she hasn't been on yet.
When it comes to very spontaneous, very intuitive decisions that always lead to a good ending, no one beats the Grebers: be it on her own or together with her husband, Tomasz, and their daughter, Mia, living in their camper van called Thelma - Marta says she's Louise but hopes for a better ending than in the movie; be it backpacking, or moving to a new country for good.
I first heard of Marta when I started my own blog and found endless inspiration in hers, on What Should I Eat for Breakfast Today?. Her photography drew me into her digital wonderland of breakfasts and traveling. Her pictures are full of joy, depth, and color. Marta has a great talent, she can tell a story in a single picture. Once, many years ago, she shared a picture of a dish that was shoot on an old Yves Klein-blue door. The contrast of the blue surface and the spring green food made the dish almost pop out of the screen. Marta is the reason why both of my books have blue covers.
Always drawn to breakfasts - years ago she told me it's the only time of the day that you can really plan - it was in Australia when she felt overwhelmed by the variety and excitement that this meal of the day can bring to your life and table. Banana bread and pancakes, Dutch baby and chunky cookies, Finish pannukakku, shakshuka, Portuguese pastel de nata - her insatiable Wanderlust and appetite became the endless source of inspiration for her food blog, one of the most popular blogs in the last 10 years.
"It’s about living in a van. Imagine when it’s raining, you sit in your apartment, you have this awesome window, you look through the window, you look at people running on the street and hurry somewhere and I am always in a different place. So when it’s raining I’m looking, for instance, at the sea, and at the storm over the sea. There’s the wind, the beach is empty, a bird is fighting with the wind. For me it’s amazing and whenever things like this happen, it’s like each second day, I tell Tomasz: This is the reason why we’re here!" - Marta Greber
Her life wasn't meant to be so adventures from the beginning. Marta grew up in Poland, still experiencing the communist system in her childhood years. She studied law, married early, and for a long time she didn't even question that she would live a settled life in Poland. However, her first long trips to the US, staying in Las Vegas as part of a work and travel program for Polish students - there couldn't have been a bigger contrast between her country's communist past and this flashing capital of capitalism - living in and exploring Australia together with her husband followed by various adventures in South East Asia, they all changed her.
So as she went back to Poland, reflecting about where she sees herself at that point in her life, after all those impressions and experiences, she decided to take the time to figure exactly that out. She didn't want to be a lawyer but she had no idea what the next steps should be, she couldn't see her future yet as a successful blogger, photographer, and journalist but she grabbed the chance to find that out.
When you hear her talk about her beloved mornings when the family is on the road, stepping out of her camper van welcomed by silence and the sun rising over a lonely beach, or misty hilltops, her cup of coffee in one hand, she's the happiest person in the world. And I totally understand why. To see someone being so brave to actually make all those radical changes in her life and to do what many just talk about, to see the peace she found, this is very touching. There's so much I learn from this woman and I'm sure this will never change.
Recently Marta had to change her diet and she reduced her consumption of flour but she didn't want to spoil the fun so she got experimental. For the Meet in My Kitchen podcast, she shared a flourless cookie recipe with me, made of chickpeas, peanut butter, bittersweet chocolate, and a squeeze of lemon. The cookies taste so good and have such a moist texture that we emptied the tray before the cookies had a chance to cool. The recipe is adapted from one of Marta's blogger friends, Texanerin.
Giving up their apartment in Berlin - actually while we recorded the podcast - and now moving to Lisbon, the Grebers are ready for a new chapter in their life. This is the reason why we shot the recipe in my kitchen and not in Marta's. Thank you, Mia, for being an awesome kitchen assistant, reliable cookie tester, and for patiently waiting behind the closed kitchen door until Marta and I finished the podcast recording before we could start baking together.
The podcast episode with Marta Greber is in English. You can listen to the Meet in My Kitchen podcast on all common podcast platforms; there are English and German episodes. You can find all the blog posts about these podcast episodes including my guests’ recipes here on the blog under Meet in Your Kitchen.
Listen to the podcast episode with Marta on:
Spotify / Apple / Deezer / Google / Amazon / Podimo
On Instagram you can follow the podcast @meetinmykitchenpodcast!
Chocolate Chickpea Cookies
by Marta Greber
Makes about 22 small cookies
240g / 1 1/3 cup drained and rinsed canned chickpeas
175g / 2/3 cup smooth peanut butter, at room temperature
60ml / 1/4 cup agave syrup, or maple syrup
1 teaspoon baking powder
A pinch of salt
A squeeze of lemon
100g / 3,5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped
Preheat the oven to 175°C / 350°F (preferably convection setting) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Combine the chickpeas, peanut butter, agave syrup, baking powder, salt, and lemon juice and, using a food processor or blender stick, briefly puree but keep the mixture a little chunky. Using a large spoon, fold in the chocolate.
Shovel a spoonful of dough into your hand, form into a ball, and transfer to the prepared baking sheet. Slightly flatten the dough with a teaspoon. Repeat to make around 21 more cookies, leaving a little space between them.
Bake for around 10 minutes or until golden; they will still be very soft and moist in the center. Let them cool for at least 10 minutes before you transfer them to a cooling rack; they will stay quite soft. Enjoy!
