Crispy around the edges, chewy in the middle, and delicious all over -- it's virtually impossible not to fall in love with these tahini cookies. As their name suggests, the star of the show is the sesame paste that you may know as the crucial component of hummus, but it also works wonders in sweet treats. In this recipe, tahini gives an incredible depth of flavor, and a coating of sesame seeds makes the cookies as pretty as they are delicious.
More than any other veggie dish in my repertoire, this is the one people request again and again. This recipe originally appeared in my mini-but-mighty Tahini cookbook in 2016, but once I moved to Israel, I made a few changes, like eliminating butter and swapping in olive oil, that reflect the way I cook here. If you can find multicolored carrots, great, and if you can find thinner farmers’ market– style ones, even better. If your carrots are on the larger side, cut them lengthwise so no piece is more than half an inch thick; this softens them up in preparation for their deliciously sweet, lemony tahini glaze. The recipe purposely makes a generous amount of dressing, because you’ll want to put it on everything, from cold noodles to fish and any roasted veggie under the sun. I recommend doubling or even tripling this recipe; the carrots shrink, but people’s appetite for them never does. If you do multiply, make sure to use more baking sheets so the carrots roast, not steam. The carrots are just as good, if not better, at room temperature, making them perfect sit-around buffet food.
Popsicles (known here as artikim) are a national obsession, delivering a refreshing blast chill when the temperatures spike from hot to hades. From the cheap, delicious, artificially flavored ices you can buy along the beach to Mexican-style paletas, which come in a million gourmet flavors, it’s easy to get a frozen/sweet fix on a stick. To show off the gorgeous fruit in season, I based these pops around thick, juicy slices of figs. I slide them into popsicle molds, then tip a tart, honey-sweetened yogurt mixture around them before freezing. If you can, try to arrange your pops so the figs remain visible (see instructions in recipe), but no matter how you build them, they’re delicious. The tahini magic shell really is two-ingredient heaven; dip once and you’ve got a semi-translucent sesame slick that hardens on contact with the pops; dip twice for a thicker layer. I make a generous amount of the magic shell because it makes dipping the pops easier; you can refrigerate any leftover shell, then gently rewarm it in the microwave. If you want to halve it, you’ll just have to tip and swirl the pops around to coat them.
I’ve made these so many times, so you won’t have to. On the surface this seems like a dead-simple recipe, but it took quite a bit of tinkering to nail. Tahini has a complex molecular structure made up of lots of tiny carbohydrate molecules that cling to liquid for dear life, seizing up the way chocolate does if you add liquid to it at the wrong time. But if you play your carbs right and add the tahini last, after all of the other ingredients, it stirs in smoothly and bakes up into these sexy little squares that get better as they sit around. To make these non-dairy, swap in a neutral-flavored olive oil or vegetable oil instead of the butter.
In order to achieve the perfect balance of cakey and gooey—that sweet spot that all brownies should hit—the cooking time is crucial. It will vary by a minute or so depending on where the pan is sitting in the oven, so keep a close eye on them.