Like halva these cookies are made from sweetened sesame. These tahini cookies are gluten free, vegan and are delicious!
Chances are if you love halva, then you’ll love these cookies. Sweetened sesame is the basis for the sweet treat halva found in Southern European countries and further east. I first discovered it on a trip to Malta many years ago.
I love the simplicity of this cookie recipe. No flours or egg to behave temperamentally, just some nuts and seeds glued together with liquid sweetener and a little oil, with some baking soda to help them rise a bit.
These cookies featured in my Good Mood Food class at Made In Hackney earlier this month. Nuts and seeds are full of minerals that support good brain health, so these cookies are pretty rich and pretty calorific. As always, moderation in all things (including moderation)!
Chewy Tahini Almond Cookies
The recipe is based on the sesame cookies from Elana’s pantry, adapted to my preference. I suggest you use an accurate weighing scale. The texture of the cookies may not be quite right if the ingredients are out of balance (do you hear the voice of experience?).
Please do not substitute ingredients here. As an experimental Natural Chef, I spend a lot of time and, yes, money developing recipes, and I have probably tried that ingredient and found that it didn’t work well.
As an example, I determined that a granulated sugar just does not work in this recipe. It may eventually work in a recipe with similar ingredients, but not as a straight swap for syrup used here. The cookies took much longer to cook and fell apart in the oven. Then to top it all off, I burnt my ENTIRE mouth sampling a cookie straight from the oven. The fizz I heard as I bit into the cookie was indeed the roof of my mouth singeing. It took days for my mouth to recover.
- 135g ground almonds
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 150g maple syrup or honey
- 120g tahini
- 1 ½ Tablespoon olive oil
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 16 whole almonds for topping
- Preheat oven to 180 C
- In a large bowl, combine ground almonds and baking soda. In a smaller bowl, weigh and stir together maple syrup, tahini, oil and vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, stir well, then use your hands to bring it together into a ball of cookie dough. The dough should be fairly stiff, not sloppy.
- Form the dough into 4-5cm inch balls using your fingers, or a small ice-cream scoop to portion it and place on a parchment lined baking tray. Flatten the dough balls with a fork and top with a whole almond. Bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly browned. They will still be soft and harden as they cool. Cool on a wire rack.
Yum! I love tahini so much – I was actually looking for a cookie recipe using it not long ago, but found nothing! At least nothing with minimal ingredients – this is my kind of cookie! I seriously need to go to one of your cooking classes too…
A kindred tahini spirit. I’m always surprised when I hear people don’t like it – its so good. Have fun cooking these and yes would be great to see you at a cooking class soon!!
What a cool recipe! I’m definitely making these. Thanks!
Thanks Linda, glad to hear you like the sound of these!
Lush. Want. Now. 🙂
Easy peasy. These are the quickest cookies ever. Just don’t eat when boiling hot 🙂
love! shall be making these! x
Oh fantastic 🙂 hope you enjoy ether as much as I do Sumayya!! x
Is the ground almonds the same as almond flour?
In the uk it is yes!!!
Oooh, Ceri, these look fabulous! I love tahini, so I can’t wait to try out this sweet cookie. Yum!
Thanks Katie. The combination of almonds tahini and sweetness is indeed a little incredible. Hope you enjoy these cookies. They also work with peanut butter 🙂
Halva in a biscuit, they sound divine Ceri. And so easy to make too.
Thanks Tina!
Oh my! These look delicious!! I have been searching for a recipe like this. But I don’t know how to convert to US cup measurements. How do I do that without a scale? Help? 🙂
Thanks Sandy! Ah the opposite problem that I usually have! I find the conversion tables on Chocolate and Zucchini very helpful. http://chocolateandzucchini.com/conversions/ Hope that helps!
Tried these biscuits yesterday after looking for a recipe to use up tahini. They turned out lovlely! They are very chewy to eat so I’m not sure if I accidentally measured something wrong but they were stilll so nice! Thank you
Thanks Megan. They are indeed meant to be chewy! If you want them firmer add more almonds to the batter before cooking. It also depends how runny your tahini is, but they usually come out a little different each time I make them!
Best paleo cookie recipe out there!!!!
Thank you!! Chocolate version coming soon ;0)
Wow, I was expecting a drier texture more like halva or a peanut butter cookie, (I guess because of the fork prints), but no, these cookies were moist and chewy! They were so delicious and ridiculously easy to make! I didn’t read the directions correctly and made 4-5 INCH cookies (rather than cms) and ended up with 6 enormous, beautiful cookies. Whoops! These were a total winner. Thank you so much for coming up with this recipe.
Hi Isabelle
So glad you enjoyed these cookies – and wow 4-5 inches they must have been massive!! You’re welcome 🙂
Hi Ceri. Can I use extra virgin olive oil or does it have to be lighter please?
This is so yummy. Thank you for the recipe😊 I doubled the recipe and made 40 bite size chewy cookies.
I make these cookies at least once a month for several years now and still love them. I only reduced the amount of maple sirup a bit over time. Just today, a friend was freaking out over them and asked for the recipe:-) So thank you for this delicious recipe!! Marlise
Well mine burnt
And we’re like a soft rubber
Not crunchy
I added honey instead
What did I do wrong :/ such a pity
I’m so sorry the recipe didn’t work out for you. I think everyone’s oven is different so that could be the explanation.