Tahini Cookies
By Rachel Davies
Sometimes you can’t beat a homemade biscuit and a cup of tea.
I say this as someone whose grandmother sent out homemade biscuits to Zambia when I was living there, and before I could bake myself, I used to beg my sister to make biscuits, as well as the lemon drizzle cake that was our ultimate obsession.
But tahini I hear you say… Is that wise? Where do you even buy it from?
Well, if you fall into this category, I urge you to try these biscuits. You can generally buy tahini paste from health food shops, and I prefer to buy vats of it from a Mediterranean shop in Kentish Town with a whole shelf devoted to various types of tahini. There’s another shelf just of olive oils, and the dried fruit is amazing, but I digress…
If you know a similar Mediterranean or Middle Eastern shop, you might be lucky regarding the tahini paste availability, and of course, the Ottolenghi effect means you might be able to find some in supermarkets too.
The cookies don’t really taste of tahini, but just have a mellow, creamy nuttiness, and they must almost be healthy with all those protein-filled sesame seeds.
But my main sell is that after you’ve made these cookies (which really are delicious) you can use the remaining tahini paste to make up fresh tahini sauce.
Just stir the paste, and pour a centimetre or two into a tall, narrow container. Add a little more water than the paste, and blend with a hand blender until smooth. Add lemon juice, salt and garlic if you like, to taste, adding more water if it is too thick, more tahini paste if it’s too runny. Use in a dressing, pour some over vegetables, use as a sauce for meat, or scoop it up with a spoon as my one-year-old likes to do!
Enjoy.
Tahini Cookies
Makes 25
Ingredients
125g butter, at room temperature
100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
zest of half an orange
1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
90ml raw tahini
225g plain flour
5g baking powder
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- In a standing mixer or using a hand-held electric whisk, beat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.
- Add the vanilla, cinnamon, zest, salt and tahini, and beat until incorporated.
- Add the flour and baking powder and mix slowly until the dough comes together and is smooth.
- Pinch off 20g of the dough and roll into a ball. Place on a lined baking tray and press lightly with the back of a fork to flatten slightly. Repeat with the remaining dough, spacing out the dough by at least 3cm.
- Sprinkle a little extra cinnamon over the shortbreads and bake for 15-17 minutes, or until lightly golden.
- Transfer to a wire rack to cool, and store in a sealed container.
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