Baked Falafel retains all the nutrients of chickpeas which are unfortunately lost in deep frying.
Wash chickpeas thoroughly and soak them in enough water for 4 to 6 hours or overnight.
Roughly chop onion, garlic, parsley and cilantro.
Once chickpeas are properly soaked and doubled in size, drain all the water and put them in the food processor.
Add chopped onion, garlic, parsley, cilantro, salt and pepper.
Grind coarsely everything. It looks like a crumbled dough and is wet also because of onions.
Take out this crumbled dough in a bowl and add very little chickpeas flour until no longer wet and you can form balls out of it. It should not stick to your hands. If it does, add little more chickpeas flour.
Keep the dough in the refrigerator for at least half an hour. If possible for an hour or two. This resting period allows the excess starch to seep out and mixture binds together easily, thus becomes easy to form balls.
Preheat air fryer for 1o minutes at 180 degrees C.
Mix and make medium sized balls.
When the air fryer is preheated, take out the basket of air fryer and keep the balls in it and put the basket back in the air fryer.
After 7 to 8 minutes. flip the balls so that they are properly cooked from both the sides.
After another 6 to 7 minutes, see that the falafels are properly cooked and golden in colour.
Serve these with hummus or with pita bread and hummus.