Contents
Sesame paste in place of some of the butter, with dark chocolate and a heavy scatter of sesame seeds. It is a recent cookie — the tahini-in-dessert move spread from Israeli and Palestinian bakeries into Western pastry in the 2010s — and it earns its place here because tahini behaves in a dough in a way no other common ingredient does.
What makes it work
- Tahini is 55% fat and 20% protein, so it substitutes for butter and for some of the flour at once, and it brings a bitterness that reads as savoury against the sugar. Use a runny, well-stirred, light-coloured tahini; the thick sludge at the bottom of an old jar bakes bitter.
- It absorbs water aggressively. A tahini dough stiffens as it sits, which is why this recipe runs slightly wetter than a standard drop cookie and why the chill is short.
- Halve the salt you think you need and then add it back. Tahini brings its own savoury note; the balance point is higher than in a butter cookie, around 7 g here.
- Sesame seeds on the outside, toasted. Roll the balls in them. Untoasted seeds on the surface taste of raw paste.
Ingredients
Makes about 20.
- 170 g unsalted butter, softened
- 150 g runny tahini, well stirred
- 200 g light brown sugar
- 100 g granulated sugar
- 1 egg plus 1 yolk
- 2 tsp vanilla — see Pure vanilla extract
- 280 g all-purpose flour
- 5 g baking soda
- 7 g fine salt
- 200 g dark chocolate, chopped — see Chocolates
- 100 g sesame seeds, toasted, for rolling
- flaky salt, to finish
Method
Beat the butter, tahini and both sugars for three minutes. Add the egg, yolk and vanilla and beat one minute more.
Fold in the flour, soda and salt, then the chocolate. The dough is softer than a standard cookie dough and will firm up noticeably within the hour.
Chill 45 minutes — no longer, or it goes crumbly.
Roll 65 g balls and roll each in the toasted sesame seeds. Bake 180 °C / 350 °F for 11–13 minutes, until the edges are set and the centres still soft. Finish with flaky salt.
Notes
- Halva instead of chocolate is the version most Levantine bakeries sell: 150 g crumbled halva folded in at the end, and no chocolate at all.
- Tahini and date syrup or molasses is the classic Levantine pairing; a tablespoon in the dough deepens it further.
- Keeps four days. The dough keeps three days refrigerated and gets stiffer each day — let it sit out 20 minutes before scooping.
Elsewhere on the site
Method and theory: Cookie recipes · cookies · Nuts And Seeds
Nearby: brown butter toffee cookies · chocolate crinkle cookies · maamoul