Salted Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love making middle eastern food, but I never know what to do with a whole jar of tahini after using a few tablespoons in hummus or on falafel. Enter these salted tahini chocolate chip cookies, adapted from Danielle Oron's Modern Israeli Cooking, by way of my name is yeh. These cookies have all of the chocolatey, chewy goodness of a chocolate chip cookie with an extra warm nuttiness from the tahini and a nice sweet-salt balance with coarse salt sprinkled on top.

A few changes: the original recipe states that you must rest this dough for 12 hours and that any less is nonnegotiable. I couldn't wait to eat these, so I made half of them right away, and chilled the rest overnight. I didn't find any difference, so I'd say go for the instant gratification! 

Second, I have made these with both white sugar, as the recipe states, and sucanat, and I like the rounded, earthy flavor that sucanat/light brown sugar brings to the cookie, but either works based on your preference! Lastly, while I'm sure Valrhona disks would be amazing in these cookies, I didn't have any on hand, and I'm happy to report that are just as delicious with semi or bittersweet chocolate chips. Without further ado...

Salted Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes 30 cookies

Ingredients

• 1 stick room temperature butter (1/2 cup or 133 grams)
• 1/2 cup tahini (sesame paste) 
• 1 cup sucanat, light brown sugar
• 1 egg and 1 yolk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup plus 2 tbsp all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp table salt
• 1 cup bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips (I used guittard 63% cocoa)
• course salt for sprinkling on top (I used maldon to be fancy but any big grained salt will do)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 325 F
• Using a hand beater or electric mixer cream together butter, sugar, and tahini until fluffy, about 3 minutes is fine
• Add in eggs and vanilla, beat again for another 3 minutes
• In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients
• Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, mix until just combined
• add chocolate chips by stirring them in with a mixing spoon
• Roll dough into about 2 inch balls and place them an inch apart on a baking sheet
• Sprinkle cookies with coarse salt
• bake for 13 minutes