Chocolate tahini cookies
Chocolate tahini cookies
As many of you know I live on a small Greek island called Paros. This year the wonderful Greek climate has been fighting against the chillier autumn weather and we’ve been lucky enough to enjoy warm and sunny weather… until now. As soon as November arrived, the days got shorter and we are starting to remember what it feels like to be cold. We’ve even had to start doing crazy Northern European things like wear socks and warm slippers.
The cat, who spent all of summer prowling outside and sleeping face down on cool marble floor tiles is sneaking up to our bed to sleep during the day. Autumn chill has officially arrived.
Two months ago the idea of a hot cup of tea would have brought cries of “are you kidding?!?” resonating throughout the household, but now hot tea seems like a wonderful idea. And what better accompaniment to tea than a nice biscuit?
So, taking all this into account, I decided to take one of my favourite recipes of last year, my tahini cookies, and elevate them by making them into chocolate tahini cookies. What biscuit isn’t made better by the addition of chocolate?
These cookies are unbelievably easy to make, require only 6 ingredients and taste soooo good. They are vegan, gluten-free and refined sugar free so pretty much guilt-free too 😉 .
- 120 ml / ½ cup maple syrup*
- 90 ml / ¼ + 1/8 cup tahini**
- 90 gr / 1 cup walnut halves, ground finely (approx. ¾ cup ground walnuts)
- 135 gr / approx. 1 + ¼ cup buckwheat flour
- heaped ½ tsp baking soda
- 4 level tbsp / ¼ cup cacao powder
- fine sea salt (optional)
- white sesame seeds to decorate (optional)
- In a bowl, whisk up maple syrup and tahini until fully combined and there are no lumps in your tahini.
- Mix in ground walnuts until fully combined.
- In a separate bowl, combine sifted flour, baking soda and cacao powder. Add it to the tahini mixture in 3 batches. The mixture will be thick and sticky so it’s best to use your hands. (If you’ve swapped buckwheat flour for a gluten flour, be careful not to overmix the dough as the cookies will come out hard).
- Weigh the dough and divide it into 16 even pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and dip it in a plate of sesame seeds mixed in with a bit of salt (if using), press the ball down with a bottom of a glass to create a ½ cm thick 5 cm (2 in) diameter disc.
- Once you get all the discs coated in sesame seeds, put them into the fridge for about 40 min. 30 min in, pre-heat the oven to 175° C / 350° F.
- Bake in a hot oven for 10-12 mins. Remove the biscuits from the oven, transfer them to a cooling rack and let them cool down completely before eating. Store in an airtight container.
**If your tahini has separated, make sure you stir the oil back in before using it in this recipe.
This recipe is based on my previous recipe for tahini cookies.
Yes, I am pretty sure that they will both work well too! x Ania
I’ve had these cookies from a Greek bakery (in London, UK) before and love them so really looking forward to making them myself. I was wondering if there was any substitute for the walnuts that might work because I’ve got a guest with a tree-nut allergy (she can only have peanuts, for example).
Thanks in advance!
Fareen
I'm glad you are planning to making these and I hope they will hit the spot! As for the substitution, typically I would recommend almond meal for example, but in this case maybe finely ground sesame seeds or sunflower seeds would be your best bet. You could also try rice flour as it will make them a bit lighter too. They will be a bit different, but should work equally well. Hope that helps! Ania
I buckwheat flour is not available where I live so I use oat flour, I divided the dough into 24 cookies instead of 16 (because more cookies, right?), the result was incredible crispy cookies instead of soft, which is how I actually prefer my cookies :)
The first time to make it I felt it was not sweet enough for me, so the following times I eliminated the cocoa powder and increased the amount of flour a bit, it was a huge hit in my house.
I plan on experimenting a bit more and try using date paste for sweetening as well.
Love it!
Yasmeen
Thank you have a nice day!
I was wondering If I could subsititute Maple syrup with Honey and Walnuts with Almonds and Gluten free flour. In the comments above I saw someone has substituted honey and Almond but not the Gluten Free Flour. Any Idea ?
Please feel free to adjust to your liking, but I cannot make any promises about the outcome, I'm afraid. Ania
Amazing recipe thanks a lot !
Thanks so much for kind words, I'm so pleased to hear that you liked them! I'm not sure how long they will last as nothing ever lasts long in my house (my boyfriend eats like a horse ;) ) but worth giving it a shot, for sure. x Ania
My cookies came out really, really dry and I followed the recipe. They would have had good flavor but were almost too dry to chew.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Sita
Hmm, I'm not sure, they are soft cookies but certainly shouldn't be dry. Did you use exactly the same flours and amounts as I did? When you were forming the cookies was your mixture like play-dough or crumbly? Did you use raw cocoa or cacao?
Ania (not Katie, btw ;) )
Depends which flour you have in mind...I'm pretty sure rice flour and oat flour would work fine, for example. If you want to use wheat flour, you'll need to incorporate the flour very gently as otherwise you'll activate gluten and the cookies will end up tough.
Hope that helps,
Ania