We love making cookie recipes as we can have fun experimenting with new and exciting flavours every time. After lots of savoury recipes with tahini, we decided to use this delicious sesame paste to bake some Middle-Eastern-flavoured biscuits. So, here are our wonderful tahini cookies: they're vegan, sugar-free, gluten-free, and incredibly delicious.
We made the cookie dough using oat, rice flour, maple syrup, and coconut milk drink. We spiced it with sweet cinnamon, zesty lemon and shaped it into thick cookies. Then, we coated them with crunchy pistachios and baked them until perfectly golden. We're sure you'll love them as much as we did!
When we designed this recipe, we took inspiration from the classic barazeh (barazek) biscuits, very popular in Lebanese and Syrian cuisines. They're butter cookies coated with sesame seeds on one side and pistachios on the other. To make them healthier and vegan, we swapped butter with sesame paste and refined sugar with maple syrup.
Also, we replaced the flour with a gluten-free combo of oat and rice flour, so they're perfectly safe for those with gluten-sensitivity or celiacs. Finally, we used coconut milk drink as a dairy-free alternative to cow milk and to add a hint of sweetness.
Tahini is a famous paste from the Middle East made with hulled sesame seeds. They are first toasted and then ground into a silky and butter-like spread. We love using tahini in our healthy vegan recipes as it's an excellent replacement for fats; it also adds extra proteins, iron, and calcium, not to mention a rich, nutty flavour.
Enjoy these crispy cookies with a cup of tea or coffee, and savour their nutty sesame notes and spicy cinnamon kick. If you haven't tried tahini in sweet recipes before, it's time to give it a go — and don't forget to check out these gooey energy bars and sesame candies for more tahini-goodness!
Ingredients
| Rolled Oats | 50 g |
| Pistachios | 40 g |
| Rice Flour | 100 g |
| Baking Powder | 1 tsp |
| Ground Cinnamon | 1/2 tsp |
| Tahini | 45 g |
| Maple Syrup | 50 mL |
| Lemon Zest | 1 tsp |
| Coconut Milk Drink | 70 mL |
Step 1
Add the rolled oats to a food processor and blitz them for a minute until they're finely ground, similar to flour (1).
Next, chop the pistachios into small chunks and keep them aside to coat the cookies later (2).
Step 2
Now, add the prepared oat flour to a bowl, followed by rice flour, baking powder, and ground cinnamon. Give all a good mix to ensure the baking powder is evenly distributed.
Then, tip in the tahini paste, maple syrup, lemon zest, and coconut milk drink.
Step 3
Mix the ingredients with a spoon until they come together, and then transfer the mixture onto your worktop. Briefly knead it with your hands into a compact, pliable, and slightly sticky dough.
At this point, you can optionally roll the dough into a ball, wrap it in cling film, and let it rest in the fridge for 15 minutes. This way, it will be easier to handle and shape into cookies.
Step 4
Line a baking tray with parchment paper and spread the chopped pistachios onto a plate.
For each cookie, pinch off a small handful of dough and roll it into a ball between your palms. Then, flatten it down onto the pistachios, pressing down to make them stick.
Finally, place the cookie onto the baking tray with the nut-coated side facing up.
Repeat this step until you have used all the tahini cookie dough.
Step 5
Bake the cookies for 18 minutes at 180 °C (355 °F) in static mode or at 160 °C (320 °F) in fan mode if you're cooking them on multiple trays (1).
Finally, transfer the tahini biscuits onto a wire rack to let them cool down and harden (2).
Tips
You can swap oat and rice flour with other gluten-free alternatives like almond meal, coconut or buckwheat flour.
Besides cinnamon, you can spice up the cookies with ground cardamom, clove, and ginger or use orange zest instead of lemon zest.
Once completely cool, transfer the cookies into an airtight container or zip-lock bag and store them for up to 5 days.