⏱ Prep: 15 min 🧊Chill: 1 hr 🔥Bake: 12 min 👤Makes: 18–20 cookies
Tahini cookies are what halva would be if halva were a cookie, deeply nutty, slightly toasty, with a texture that is crisp at the edges, tender in the centre and melt-in-the-mouth throughout. Browned butter and tahini creamed with brown and white sugar, one egg and vanilla, rolled in a mixture of sesame seeds and sugar before baking until golden. One bowl. Thirty minutes of active work. The cookie that people cannot identify immediately but cannot stop eating.
Ingredients
- ½ cup (115g) unsalted butter, browned. Browning the butter first is the single upgrade that makes these cookies taste noticeably more complex and nutty. It takes 8 minutes and makes a significant difference. See step 1. Room temperature butter works too, skip the browning and cream directly.
- ½ cup (120g) well-stirred tahini, plain, unseasoned tahini only. Read the label carefully, many brands flavour tahini with garlic or herbs for savoury use. Plain sesame paste only. Stir the jar thoroughly before measuring, tahini separates during storage. Good quality brands: Soom, Seed + Mill, Cedar’s, Ziyad.
- ⅓ cup (65g) granulated white sugar
- ⅓ cup (65g) light brown sugar, packed. The combination of white and brown sugar produces the ideal texture, white sugar creates crispiness, brown sugar adds chewiness and a slight caramel depth.
- 1 large egg, room temperature. Cold eggs can cause the browned butter to seize and clump.
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon toasted sesame oil, optional but recommended, deepens the sesame flavour noticeably
- 1¼ cups (155g) all-purpose flour, spooned and levelled, not scooped. Too much flour produces a dry, crumbly cookie instead of the tender, melt-in-mouth texture.
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt, balances the sweetness and amplifies the sesame flavour
For the sesame sugar coating
- 3 tablespoons toasted white sesame seeds, or a mix of white and black for visual drama. Toast in a dry pan 2 minutes until golden, toasted seeds are far more fragrant than untoasted.
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, mixed with the sesame seeds. The sugar-sesame coating creates a slightly caramelised, crunchy exterior as the cookies bake.
Step by step
- Brown the butter. Melt butter in a light-coloured saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally. The butter will foam, then the foam will subside and golden-brown flecks will appear at the bottom of the pan. The moment it smells nutty and toasty, remove from heat immediately. Pour into a large mixing bowl and leave to cool to room temperature, approximately 20 minutes. Do not skip the cooling step. Hot butter added to sugar and tahini melts the sugars and produces a greasy, broken batter.A light-coloured pan makes it easy to see the colour of the butter as it browns. In a dark pan the flecks are hard to see and the butter burns before you notice. Watch it constantly in the final 2 minutes, it goes from perfect to burnt in under 30 seconds.
- Make the dough. Add the tahini, white sugar and brown sugar to the cooled browned butter. Mix with a wooden spoon or spatula until completely smooth. Add the egg, vanilla extract and sesame oil. Mix vigorously for 1–2 minutes until the mixture thickens and becomes glossy. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and fold until a soft dough just forms, stop the moment no dry flour is visible.The dough will be soft and slightly sticky, this is correct. Chilling firms it into a scoopable consistency. If it seems very soft, it needs more chilling time, not more flour.
- Chill the dough. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, up to 24 hours. This step is not optional. Cold dough spreads less in the oven and produces a thicker, more structured cookie. Warm dough spreads flat and thin. The chilling time also allows the flavours to develop, the longer the chill, the more complex the cookie tastes.
- Make the sesame sugar coating. Combine toasted sesame seeds and granulated sugar in a shallow bowl. Stir to mix evenly. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Shape and coat. Scoop the chilled dough into balls using a tablespoon or small cookie scoop, approximately 1½ tablespoons each. Roll each ball in the sesame sugar mixture until completely and generously coated, press gently so the seeds adhere. Place on the prepared baking sheets leaving 2 inches between each, these cookies spread.A 1½-tablespoon ball bakes into a 3–4 inch cookie. These cookies spread significantly, the gap between them is not optional.
- Bake. Bake at 350°F for 11–13 minutes until the edges are set and lightly golden and the centres still look very slightly underdone and soft. They will continue firming as they cool, removing them when they look done produces overbaked, dry cookies.The cookies will look underdone in the centre when you pull them from the oven. This is correct, resist the urge to bake longer. They firm to the perfect texture as they cool on the pan for 10 minutes. Overbaked tahini cookies are dry and lose their melt-in-mouth quality entirely.
- Cool. Leave on the baking sheet for 10 full minutes before transferring to a wire rack, they are fragile when hot and firm considerably as they cool. The sesame seed coating becomes slightly caramelised and crunchy during the first 10 minutes out of the oven. Best eaten day 2, the flavour deepens and the sesame seeds soften slightly into the cookie.
Why these taste like halva
Tahini and halva both come from sesame seeds, tahini is the raw paste, halva is tahini cooked with sugar until it sets into a dense, slightly crumbly sweet. In these cookies the tahini and sugar achieve something similar, the sesame paste and the sugar meld during baking into a flavour that is recognisably sesame but with a toasted, slightly caramel sweetness that neither ingredient has on its own.
The browned butter doubles down on this. Browning converts the milk solids in butter into hundreds of aromatic compounds, nutty, toasty, slightly biscuity, that align perfectly with the sesame flavour and produce a cookie that tastes significantly more complex than the ingredient list suggests.
Variations worth trying
Claire’s note
The base recipe here is the classic Middle Eastern version, sesame-coated and straightforwardly nutty. Three variations worth trying: Chocolate chip tahini, fold ½ cup of chopped dark chocolate into the dough after chilling. The bitter chocolate against the sweet sesame is outstanding. Cardamom tahini, add ½ teaspoon of ground cardamom to the dry ingredients. The floral warmth of cardamom amplifies the Middle Eastern character significantly. Honey and tahini, replace both sugars with 6 tablespoons of honey for a less sweet, more complex cookie that is also naturally free of refined sugar. All three work with the same baking time and temperature.
Serve with
Tahini cookies are excellent with Arabic coffee, the bitter intensity of the coffee against the sweet, nutty cookie is the classic Middle Eastern pairing. They also sit beautifully on a full Middle Eastern dessert spread alongside basbousa and baklava as the simpler, less sticky element. For everything else in the Middle Eastern baking collection the complete Middle Eastern recipes guide has it all.
Add tahini cookies to your weekly meal planner as the weekend baking project, make the dough Friday, bake Saturday, eat all week. And for more recipes, follow us on Pinterest.
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Tahini Cookies
- Total Time: 1 hour 27 minutes
- Yield: 18–20 cookies 1x
- Diet: Vegetarian
Description
Deliciously nutty tahini cookies with a crispy edge and tender center, reminiscent of halva.
Ingredients
- ½ cup (115g) unsalted butter, browned
- ½ cup (120g) plain tahini, well-stirred
- ⅓ cup (65g) granulated white sugar
- ⅓ cup (65g) light brown sugar, packed
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon toasted sesame oil (optional)
- 1¼ cups (155g) all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- For sesame sugar coating: 3 tablespoons toasted white sesame seeds
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
Instructions
- Brown the butter: Melt butter in a light-coloured saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally until golden-brown flecks appear. Pour into a mixing bowl and cool to room temperature.
- Add the tahini, white sugar, and brown sugar to the cooled browned butter. Mix until smooth. Add the egg, vanilla extract, and sesame oil.
- Chill the dough: Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
- Combine toasted sesame seeds and sugar for the coating in a shallow bowl.
- Scoop the chilled dough into balls and roll in the sesame sugar mixture.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Bake for 11–13 minutes until edges are set and lightly golden.
- Cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.
Notes
Best eaten on day 2 for optimal flavor. Can be paired with Arabic coffee or other Middle Eastern desserts.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 12 minutes
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: Middle Eastern
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cookie
- Calories: 150
- Sugar: 8g
- Sodium: 70mg
- Fat: 7g
- Saturated Fat: 3g
- Unsaturated Fat: 4g
- Trans Fat: 0g
- Carbohydrates: 20g
- Fiber: 1g
- Protein: 3g
- Cholesterol: 15mg
