Oven Baked Falafel

Over the 2015 Christmas vacation, my husband was off work and it was very nice to have him home. My husband loves to cook and this time he decided we will try making falafels. We made a first batch following a recipe he had found on the internet but we needed to cook them in oil. The following week we decided to make meatballs and used mini muffin pans We had at home. Hubby really liked using the mini muffin pans for the meatballs and already we had a ton of ieas on how to use them. You see we usually cook in batch to save time and energy. And with a family of six and our big batch of cooking we make, we decided t invest in new mini muffin pans that can hold 48 delicious treats.

Here's our recipe of homemade falafels. We make numerous recipes and ended up with over 300 falafels that we stored in the freezer.

2 cups of soaked chickpeas
4 cloves of garlic
1 small onion, finely chopped (or half of a big one)
1/4 cup of fresh parsley, finely chopped
1/8 to 1/4 cup of fresh coriander, finely chopped
1 1/4 tbsp of flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp chili powder
1 pinch of ginger

Chop the garlic in small bits.

Chop the cilantro and the parsley finely.

Chop the onions in small pieces.

Once all your ingredients are prepared, incorporate all the ingredients in a bowl and mix with a fork to blend the flavors. For the dry chickpeas that had soaked all night, we decided to add 1/4 cup of lemon juice and mix some more.

Take your food processor out and put the ingredients in it. On pulse settings, slowly bring the mixture to a mush (Do not bring to humus consistence!). Once this is done, transfer the mixture in another bowl and continue with the rest of the ingredients until you have gone through all the soaked chickpeas.

It is now time to make the falafels. Our first time, we asked the younger three kids to make the balls which my husband cooked in the oil. But we prefer not to have too much oil cooked food so the mini muffins pans are handy for this. We filled each of the mini muffin holes with the mixture until the two pans we had purchased were full.

400 degrees for 30 minutes.

To make you sandwiches, use half a pita bread, spread tahini and a bit of ranch salad dressing, place cucumbers and tomatoes in it. Use two falafels cut in two and roll it to eat. Delicious!

Enjoy your homemade falafel!