Tahini & Peanut Butter Cookies (Free From)

This is another recipe I’ve borrowed and tweaked from The Loopy Whisk, a fabulous free-from blog! These cookies are gluten-free and vegan along with being free from refined sugar. The original recipe uses maple syrup and I’ve used maple or agave when making them, sometimes in combination with carob or grape syrup. (Cheaper maple syrups are often a blend of maple, carob and/or grape syrup so I’ve added them in an attempt to use up some bottles of carob and grape syrup I was given, and to eke the maple syrup out a bit further as it is significantly more expensive than sugar! ) The carob syrup gave this batch of cookies a brown colour but you could always add a teaspoon or two of cocoa powder and use a little less ground almonds. If you can’t find black sesame seeds, adding cocoa powder to the dough and using regular sesame seeds will create a nice colour contrast. You can make these with just tahini or a mixture of tahini and peanut butter, which go together nicely, and indeed with chocolate.

Ingredients

100g tahini or 50g tahini and 50g peanut butter (I used crunchy)

150g ground almonds

100ml maple or other syrup(s) of your choice

1/2 tsp baking soda

3 tablespoons of sesame seeds, ideally black and white

  1. Pre-heat your oven to 180C and mix the tahini, peanut butter if using, and maple syrup together in a bowl until smooth. Add the baking soda and ground almonds – you can add some more ground almonds if the dough is on the sticky side. It is a wetter dough but will firm up in the fridge.
  2. Line a baking tray with baking paper and on another tray or plate, tip out the sesame seeds for rolling the cookies in. Next grease your hands lightly and take a generous teaspoon sized piece of dough. Roll it into a ball and press into the sesame seeds on one side. The ball of dough will flatten slightly – handling it gently, place it onto the baking paper, seedy side up.
  3. Once you’ve rolled them all, leave to chill in the fridge for 15 minutes and then bake at 180C for EIGHT minutes. Leave to cool before removing them from the trays.