Oven Baked Falafel

I love falafel and could eat it weekly. The problem is those glorious little falafel balls are usually deep fried and fried food isn't the best thing to have that often. You can imagine my excitement when I opened my Cuisine at Home magazine and saw this recipe for an oven baked version.








Lets start prepping!




First thing, grease up a pan, I am using a cake pan. I did a combo of olive oil and a little squirt of that non-stick spray stuff. I used my fingers to get the bottom nice and coated. The recipe says to preheat the oven to 375 degrees with the pan in it, so I did!




There are a lot of ingredients but this is not that hard, I promise. You need flour, crushed red pepper, onion, garbanzo beans (aka chick peas), baking powder, garlic, eggs, lemon and parsley. This will make up the falafel, we will make the sauce in a bit.




Chop up the onion and garlic.




Measure out the cumin, red pepper and salt.




Beat the egg.




Measure out the flour.




Get your garbanzo beans, cumin, red pepper, salt, parsley, lemon zest, baking powder, onion and garlic in the food processor and pulse until its coarse, but not pasty.




Drop it in a bowl, I am using my awesome Pyrex butterprint bowl.




Add in the egg and flour.




Combine it and you are ready to get these guys in the oven.




I used my ice cream scoop to drop them in the cake pan. I don't care about how they look, but if you want perfectly round falafel you can shape them a little bit better.




Measure out some olive oil and set it near the oven as you will want to brush the falafel when you give them a flip.

While those bake up, make the yogurt sauce.




You need some yogurt, tahini (sesame paste), lemon, garlic and cucumber.




Juice the lemon, preferably into a cute Pyrex bowl. Yes, I am obsessed :)




Add in the tahini.




Seed the cucumber, I just use a spoon and scrape away.




Grate the cucumber.

Don't forget about your falafel! After 20 minutes you need to flip them.




Brush them with the olive oil.




Flip them over and get them back in the oven.

Back to the sauce...




Squeeze the excess water from the cucumber.




Add the yogurt to the lemon and tahini.




Combine that together with a whisk.




Add in the cucumber and some minced garlic.




This sauce would be a great appetizer to set out with some toasted pita bread. Speaking of pita bread, I should toast some for this falafel treat.




I just toss it in the toaster oven and then use my pizza wheel to cut into quarters.




Place some falafel on the pita and drizzle with the yogurt sauce. Was this as crisp and chewy as a deep fried falafel? No. But it was absolutely delicious and filled my craving for those deep fried little wonders.