Irresistible tahini cookies bursting with flavor with aromatic, nutty browned butter. Add sesame seeds for an extra crunch layer or load it up with chocolate chips to satisfy the chocolate lovers in your home. One is never enough.
Ditch your everyday chocolate chip cookies and make them with tahini. What sets these apart though, is that we are going the extra mile and brown the butter for an extremely flavorful cookies.
What you'll need
Most tahini cookies recipes use softened butter and goes into the traditional route of creaming sugar with butter. I've decided to upgrade my tahini cookies by browning the butter. Browning butter is so easy and takes just 10 minutes of your time
How to brown butter?
Browning butter is easy to make and takes no time so you better be there right next to it and do not leave it alone. Browned butter is simply cooking butter until it is nutty with bold flavor.
- Cut butter into tablespoons and place them into your pot over medium heat. Stir consistently to ensure even cooking.
- The butter will melt and foam then bubbles, keep stirring.
- In about 7 minutes butter will turn amber brown with some bits at the bottom of the pan. Remove immediately and pour into a heat proof bowl.
- Refrigerate the browned butter until it solidifies, it takes about 1 hour.
Cookies step by step
- In a deep bowl, add browned butter and beat until fluffy then add sugars. Beat sugars and butter together until combined.
- Pour in tahini, egg and vanilla extract and beat.
- In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda and baking powder. Add dry ingredients to the tahini mixture gradually.
- Stir mixture with a wooden spoon until you have a consistent soft dough. Cover directly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes and up to 3 days.
- Scoop the dough with a small ice cream scoop and roll into a ball.
- Press the dough lightly into sesame seeds to cover.
- You can also add some chocolate chip cookies to make chocolate chip tahini cookies.
- Arrange on a baking sheet 2-3 inches apart as they spread. Bake in a preheated oven until the edges are light brown while the middles are paler.
Tips
- Brown butter in light-colored pan, this is very important especially if you are a beginner.
- Brown the butter on medium heat to ensure even melting and browning, do not be tempted to put it on high.
- To speed up solidifying the butter place on a baking sheet in a single thin layer. Your butter will take way less time to solidify.
- If you keep your dough in the fridge for too long it will be rock hard. That's ok, just take it out and let it come to room temperature.
- For more Halva flavor up the tahini to 3/4 cup.
- Chocolate chip is really up to you, use whatever variety you like.
- It is important to allow them room to spread. Sesame tahini cookies do spread to almost double the size.
- Sprinkle top with some sea salt for the perfect sweet and salty cookies.
- For a large flat cookies form your dough into 2 inches cookies for a chubby one like the chocolate chip above form into 1 1/2 inches.
Allergy
If you are allergic to sesame then unfortunately these cookies are not for you. You can use another nut butter but it will no longer be a tahini cookies.
These might be the best cookies I've ever made. They manage to be - all at once - just the right degree of bittersweet, crunchy and chewy....simply scrumptious.
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Tahini cookies
Ingredients
- 1 stick (115g) unsalted butter, cut into cubes.
- 1/2 cup tahini paste well stirred
- 1/2 cup (105g) granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup (90g) brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1-2 Tablespoons milk.
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup (135g) all-purpose flour.
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
Optional:
- Sesame seeds Or sea salt for sprinkling on top.
for chocolate chip tahini cookies:
- 2 cups/(230 grams) chocolate chips or chunks bittersweet or semisweet
Instructions
Brown the butter:
- In a light-colored pot or skillet add cubed butter and melt over medium heat.
- The butter will start foaming, stir the butter for the next 5-7 minutes until you notice brown bits at the bottom of the pot and you’ll smell the nutty aroma.
- Remove from heat and pour into a dish then refrigerate until it solidifies. This will take about an hour.
Make the cookie dough:
- In a large mixing bowl, spoon the butter. Beat the chilled butter for 1 minute until smooth.
- Add the sugars and beat well.
- Pour in tahini then add egg and vanilla extract then beat to combine.
- Add just one tablespoon of the milk and mix well, keep the other one if you feel the dough is not moist enough.
- In another bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, and baking powder.
- Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix well. Note1
- Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes or up to 3 days.
- Preheat oven to 350F
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Remove cookie dough from refrigerator and scoop batter into balls pressing lightly on sesame seeds if using.
- Place cookies on the prepared baking sheet 2-3 inches apart. Cookies will spread. Note2
- Bake anywhere from 8-10 minutes on the middle rack of your oven. Remove from oven when the edges are lightly brown and the middle is still pale.
- Allow to firm up on the cookies sheet for a couple of minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.
- Allow the cookie sheet to cool completely before adding another batch of cookies.
A fun way to find out both my sons have a sesame allergy. Oops! Yikes! (They are good though!)
I couldn't believe it either when I first discovered that one of my boys is allergic to sesame. It was through a falafel wrap and since then he refuses to eat falafel** sigh**
OMG I just tried those tonight for my halva loving husband. I made half with chocolate chip and sea salt. the other half I made with crushed pistachios as my husband loves halva with pistachios. These were so good I will sure be making this again and again.
Cheyl dear, this looks amazing. I can see you've used the trick I told you about :). Thank you for the picture dear. I am so happy you husband liked them and I will try adding the pistachios.. this is a great idea.