Sunday, October 24, 2010

Sesame sesame sesame!

This month's SOS Kitchen Challenge features–you guessed it–sesame. Hosted by Ricki of Diet, Dessert and Dogs, and Kim of Affairs of Living, the SOS challenge invites bloggers to create new recipes based on one key ingredient. The requirements: it has to be vegan and contain only natural, whole foods and no refined sugar or flour. 

Sesame is an ingredient I rarely use in baking, but I'm happy to announce that I was able to come up with a new treat using these highly nutritious seeds–in the form of tahini.


Tahini is a ground sesame seed paste and it is a staple in my vegan household: we use it to make homemade hummus, salad dressings, and sauces for vegetables and rice. It is creamy and smooth just like nut butter, and it is very rich in calcium. In fact, sesame seeds have about 10 times the amount of calcium as cow's milk (which, despite common beliefs, is not so good for your bones). Sesame seeds also contain magnesium, iron, phosphorus, vitamin B1, dietary fiber, and they are a good source of vegetable protein.

Using sesame seed paste to make something sweet rather than savoury may seem unexpected, but it works. In my new chocolate tahini cookies, the tahini adds a delicate, almost invisible crunch and a nutty taste, which perfectly complement the chocolate flavour base. If you have holiday parties coming up and you want to knock the socks off your friends with these super-healthy, "good fat" infused cookies, then read on!


Chocolate tahini cookies 
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup ground oats (grind rolled oats in a spice grinder or food processor)
1/2 cup cocoa powder, sifted
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 cup tahini
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup dark chocolate chips

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, ground oats, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, combine the tahini, maple syrup and vanilla extract.
3. Spoon the flour mixture into the tahini mixture and mix to combine. Gently stir in the chocolate chips.
4. Line a cookie pan with parchment paper and drop the cookie dough by large tablespoons onto the pan. Flatten the cookies with the bottom of a glass. 
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes or until the cookies have cracked slightly and the tops are almost dry to the touch. Cool completely on a wire rack. Store cookies in a tightly-covered container at room temperature.

4 comments:

muffinegg said...

mmm I love tahini. Tahini and honey sandwiches are a favorite of mine and I made sort of a cookie version of that once.
Your cookies look fabulous and I've never tried tahini with chocolate so I must give these a go!

taleoftwovegans said...

These look delicious and I love the idea of combining tahini and chocolate!
-K

Ricki said...

I just adore tahini, and this sounds like an incredibly delicious use of it! Fabulous-looking cookies. Thanks so much for submitting this to the SOS Challenge this month! :D

Johanna GGG said...

these cookies look wonderful - I have made a version of tahini cookies but with much less tahini so maybe will try this version

 

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