Sesame Tehina Cookies Recipe. Gluten-Free
Tehina Cookies
Not just dessert, they easily double as the perfect mini meals. Yes, this is how potent they are. Flourless, gluten-free, and packed with nothing but the best and most nutritious ingredients! Very filling too, you’ll see: Two cookies will make the perfect breakfast.
Let’s Talk Tehina!
Bowl of tahini with sesame seeds
It is pure ground sesame paste, from the tiny sesame seed powerhouse. The paste is incredibly versatile, both for savory and sweet dishes. And this is not a passing fad: I am happy to report its rock star status as super delicious and super nutritious is quite enduring. Tehina love is forever! What Chalvah dreams are made of. Those of you who are familiar with Machane Yehuda in Jerusalem have visited the Halvah Kingdom and gorged on the endless little slivers the impossibly cute salesboy with the irresistible grin hawking his heavenly wares hounds you with. Yes, a very dangerous and dreamy place indeed!
Tehina is not exclusively the Sephardi and Middle Eastern timeless culinary darling anymore. It recently made remarkable inroads in Western cooking as well. Because it is deeply and intensely flavored, all recipes that include it are short and sweet and streamlined.
Tehina Cookies and Beyond!
I couldn’t resist sharing a few of the great tehina-based recipes I have developed over the years, which I am very proud of:
Chopped Salad with Tehina Zaatar
Salmon Roulade in Tehina Sauce
Tehina Cookies Ingredients
The ingredient list is very short, and the flavor lineup marvelous; it is important that you make no concession. I am sharing here some valuable cost-effective ingredient sources: you will be mighty happy to have these ingredients on hand, for this and many other exciting recipes.
Ingredients
- 2 cups roasted sesame seeds (link in intro)
- 3 cups ground unblanched almond meal or hazelnut meal (links in intro)
- 2/3 cup tehina paste (link in intro)
- 2/3 cup honey (sorry no substitutions, you gotta have the honey)
- 1 teaspoon maldon salt flakes (link in intro)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 tablespoon of your favorite flavoring, choose just one: pure vanilla extract, orange blossom water, rose water, lemon zest, ground anise (links in intro)
Instructions
Makes about 30 cookies, or 40 medium cookies
Preheat the oven to 350*F
Line two cookie sheets with foil or parchment paper
Combine all ingredients thoroughly by hand in a bowl.
Shape balls the size of walnuts, and drop on the cookie sheets, about 2”apart (you need that room because you are flattening them). 20 per sheet for smallish cookies, 15 per sheet for larger cookies. Flatten all the balls with your fingers or with the bottom of a glass (spray it with vegetable spray first) to about 1/4 inch thick.
Bake, one sheet at a time, for 10 minutes. They will end up with a slight crunch. Let one cookie cool and check. If they didn't get crunchy, return them to the oven, still warm, turned off.
Store the cookies at room temperature in an airtight cookie tin. Or freeze part of them.
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