The recipe for these famous salted chocolate chip tahini cookies is adapted from Modern Israeli Cooking by Danielle Oron. These cookies are chewy, soft in the middle, perfectly flavored, with that slightly nutty and beautiful taste of tahini. My advice is don’t put it in the queue; don’t save it on that to-cook-one-day list, just make it, you’ll not regret. My kids devour these in seconds…
To make things a little more exotic, I used black sesame paste that I brought from the States many months ago but it turned out to be one of those ingredients that you don’t really know what to do with. It was only when I saw Danielle’s recipe and then David Lebovitz’s version that I squealed with excitement.
Black tahini, which is made from unhulled black sesame seeds that have been roasted and ground, has a slightly stronger, deeper and more intense flavour, not to mention the creamy and sludgy texture that clings to spoons, cups and fingers. Don’t worry, it washes well though.
Use the best quality chocolate you can for this recipe. It’s also important that butter and eggs are room temperature. I routinely cut down on sugar in recipes. Here, I reduced it from 200g to 170g which still produced pleasantly sweet and scrumptious cookies.
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- 115 g room temperature unsalted butter
- 120 ml sesame paste (tahini), well stirred
- 170 g light brown sugar
- 1 large egg at room temperature
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 130 g all purpose flour
- 40 g good quality cocoa *see notes below
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 flat tsp salt
- 200 g good quality chocolate or chocolate chips I used 100g of dark chocolate (64% cocoa) and 100g white chocolate
Ingredients
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- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugar and sesame paste on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 4-5 minutes. Make sure you scrape the sides of the bowl every now and then so all of the mixture is incorporated. Add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla extract and continue mixing on medium speed for another 4-5 minutes.
- In a separate bowl, sift and combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder (if using). With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until just combined. Next, add the chocolate chips and slowly and gently mix it in by hand with a rubber spatula.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Form the dough balls using either a small ice cream scoop or your hands (each ball was around 35-40 grams) and place them on the baking sheet. Danielle's advice is to now wrap the baking sheet with plastic wrap and place it in the freezer for ideally 12 hours. This will allow the glutens in the flour to relax and will give you a tender soft cookie (or if you're me, just 2 hours).
- When ready to bake, heat the oven to 160ºC (325° F) and line a baking sheet with parchment or silicone mat. Place the cookies evenly spaced on the baking sheet, at least 7cm apart to allow for them to spread. I kept mine in the oven for 14 minutes but, depending on the size of your cookies, it should be between 13 to 16 minutes, until just golden brown around the edges. They will still feel fairly unbaked in the middle, which is perfect. Sprinkle with a pinch of flaky sea salt, if you’re using it.
- And now the impossible part - try and and let them cool 20 minutes before you try them!
* If you can't get hold of black sesame paste and use the 'normal' tahini, skip the cocoa in the ingredients (I only added it to make the colour look nicer) and increase the amount of flour to 150g.
If you don't want to bake the whole batch, keep the remaining cookie dough balls in the freezer for up to 6 months.
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