Tahini cookies
Tahini is a smooth paste of ground white sesame seeds that's beloved across the Middle East, with a rich, nutty taste and a faintly bitter edge that's wonderfully moreish. In cookies, tahini makes them soft and tender, fragrant with toasted sesame and less cloyingly sweet. The sesame coating bakes up golden and crisp, adding a lovely contrast to every bite.
- Difficulty
- Very easy
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 13 min
- Rising or chilling
- 30 min
- Total time
- 1 hr 3 min
- Method
- Oven-baked
Ingredients
For the cookie dough
For the sesame coating
Instructions
Step 1
Stir the jar of tahini well first, since the sesame oil usually separates to the top, then put 130 g tahini, 115 g softened unsalted butter, 100 g granulated sugar and 50 g brown sugar in a bowl and beat for about three minutes. Add 50 g eggs and 5 g vanilla extract and keep beating until combined. Thorough beating binds the tahini and butter into one smooth mass, so the cookies don't leak oil. The mixture is ready when it's glossy and silky, pale beige and free of oily streaks.
Step 2
Sift 190 g all-purpose flour with 3 g baking soda and 3 g salt into the bowl, then mix slowly with a flat spatula just until no white flour is visible. Overmixing makes the cookies hard and robs them of their soft, tender texture. The dough is ready when it's as soft as modeling clay and slightly tacky.
Step 3
Cover the bowl tightly and refrigerate the dough for about thirty minutes. Tahini is very oily, so the dough needs to be cold to roll into balls easily and keep from spreading flat in the oven. It's ready when it feels firm and rolls into balls without sticking to your hands.
Step 4
Heat the oven to 175°C with a rack in the middle and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. A moderate heat browns the sesame evenly without burning it before the centers are baked. The oven is hot enough after about fifteen minutes.
Step 5
Pour 30 g white sesame seeds onto a plate, roll the dough into walnut-sized balls and roll each one in the seeds until fully coated. Arrange them four centimeters apart on the baking sheet, press them slightly flat and sprinkle with a little of the 2 g flaky sea salt if you like a salty-sweet flavor. The sesame coating gives the cookies crisp edges and a deep toasted aroma. You're done when every ball has an even coat of seeds with no bare spots.
Step 6
Bake at 175°C for 11 to 13 minutes, until the tops crack slightly. Taking them out while the centers are still a little soft keeps the moist, tender texture that tahini cookies are known for. They're done when the sesame has turned straw-gold and the edges are just dry.
Step 7
Leave the cookies on the baking sheet for five minutes so the bottoms firm up, then move them to a rack to cool completely. Warm cookies are still soft and break easily; only once cool are they sturdy enough to pick up. They're ready when they've cooled completely and smell of toasted sesame.
Equipment
- Oven
- Hand mixer
- Mixing bowl
- Spatula
- Kitchen scale
- Baking sheet
- Parchment paper
- Wire cooling rack
- Plastic wrap
- Refrigerator
Tips
- Choose tahini made from hulled white sesame seeds with a pourable consistency; the very thick paste at the bottom of the jar will make the cookies dry.
- You can roll the cookies in half white and half black sesame seeds for a prettier look and even more aroma.
- Adding a little chopped dark chocolate to the dough makes a wonderfully balanced bittersweet, nutty pairing.
Storage
Once completely cool, store the cookies in an airtight container in a cool, dry place for about five days. Shaped, sesame-coated dough balls can be frozen for up to a month; bake them straight from the freezer, adding two minutes.
Common problems and how to fix them
- The cookies spread flat with a ring of oil around the bottom.
- The tahini wasn't stirred well or the dough wasn't cold enough. Stir the tahini thoroughly from the bottom of the jar up and chill the dough for another fifteen minutes before baking.
- Lots of sesame seeds fall off after baking.
- The surface of the dough balls was too dry for the seeds to stick. Lightly dampen your palms before rolling the balls, then coat them in sesame right away.
This recipe is based on the common ratios for this bake and is written entirely in our own words.
