Sweet, salty and smokey roasted Chickpea snack

Sweet, salty and smokey

Snacking has a notorious reputation for being fatty, high calorie and convenient. Even the 'healthy bag of nuts' option are often roasted in salt and fat with added preservatives. But lets face it snacking is not just a pleasure it is essential sometimes; It picks you up in a long active day, keeps you motivated in long periods of study and after work out snack are vital to repair muscles. So what you got to do is snack right!

Personally I think homemade snacks are the best, you know exactly whats in it, you can make large batches and store them making them cheaper and you can adjust the taste to exactly how you like it. Here i have come up with a snack that is a crazy crunchy creation- sweet, salty and smokey roasted chickpeas with apricots.

These have no added oil or sugar and are packed with protein, iron and fiber. The taste is inspired from Moroccan dishes where dried apricots and salty smokey savory flavors are often combined to amazing effect. The chickpeas do not taste like a tagine however but still pretty darn tasty and satisfying.

Sweet, Salty and Smokey Chickpea Snack

Ingerdiants
1/3 cup chickpeas
3 table spoons maple syrup
1 1/2 tsp of smoked paprika
1 tsp of reduced sodium salt
1 garlic clove crushed
1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper (1 tsp if you like it hotter)
1/4 tsp cinnamon 
Freshly cracked black pepper
4 dried apricots

-Drain and rinse chickpeas and place in a clean tea towel. Fold the tea towel in half and rub the chickpeas around to losen their outer skins.
- Peal your chickpeas (this takes a while but worth it, trust)

- Lay on a baking tray and put in a 180 degree oven for 5-8 mins. I would advise you line your tray with tin foil as it makes cleaning up much easier, however we didn't seem to think foil was a useful thing to have on the shopping list this week..

- While the chickpeas are in the oven, mix the remain ingredients in the bottom of a medium mixing bowl. Taste, you may like it hotter, more salty, more Cinnamon just make sure its a punchy flavour as it will get milder when cooked.
-Remove the chickpeas from the oven and add to mixing bowl, toss in your sweet, salty, smokey mixture. Then place back on tray and bake till the chickpeas are crunchy, about 10-15 mins (they catch easily keep an eye on them) 
- When crunchy and done place in a clean mixing bowl and leave to cool. While they cool chop up you dried apricots and mix in with you chickpeas. Store in an air tight container once fully cooled ready when you need a good healthy snack. Bravisimo!