Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Seed Street?

When I first stumbled upon a cookie recipe incorporating tahini, I thought to myself “whoa dude, isn’t that like, the stuff that I love to slather on falafel pitas and other such savoury delicacies?” (apparently I also decided to embrace my inner surfer while contemplating my usage of tahini. Because, you know, surfer’s are extremely well known for their love of tahini?). The more I researched though, the more it seemed that people were really into this as a dessert addition. Alright, I thought, I can maybe get on board with this, I actually really love sweet and savoury combos, so let’s roll up our sleeves here and give this a whirl. The other thing that won me over though was when I started thinking about what tahini actually is. It’s just sesame seed paste, which sounds way more dessert friendly when framed in that context. Plus, I’ve already had toasted sesame seeds on many a dessert before and, loving anything toasted, it was always, of course, delicious. So let’s do this thing!

My other motivation on trying these out was that it was my mom’s birthday recently (“Hi Mom!”) and knowing her strong love of all things tahini, I figured, even if they were terrible, I could pawn these off…err birthday gift these to her with all the gravitas that such gift-giving evokes (also, it would give me the opportunity to hand them to her whilst saying “Open Sesame!”…how could I possibly resist? 😉 ). Toss a few delicious addins like candied ginger and chocolate chips, and you’ve got yourself a cookie you can really sink your teeth into.

Full disclosure – my additional reason for wanting to use tahini in cookies was because of my previously mentioned overabundance of chickpeas since my miracle aquafaba discovery. In the hummus making department, the addition of tahini is never a bad idea if you ask me, so I ended up making a fairly tasty spicy Mexican hummus (tahini, chickpeas, sundried tomatoes, lemon juice, hot sauce and chili powder), which of course leaves one with too much tahini leftover. I feel like this is starting to become a regular issue for me – I have too much of one thing, so my “genius” solution to use it up involves exchanging too much of one ingredient for too much of another. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to keep up this baking thing a little longer 😉 .