My friend Sunayana brought these round when we did a gathering at my house with our community and all made a dish.

There were honestly about 20 different dishes and they were all amazing, but these cookies were the thing I couldn’t get out my head, so I got her to share the recipe with me 🙂

So this recipe is not mine, it is completely thanks to Sunayana and her lovely mummy (who grinds the sesame seeds to make tahini herself!!)

Though this is seemingly quite a traditional Indian recipe, tahini is also part of my own ancestral diet. Moroccans use tahini for everything and I was raised by a grandmother (Meme!) who also ground her own tahini into a paste. That’s probably why these flavours landed so well with me.

The great thing – unlike a lot of my Meme’s complex recipes! – is that these are super simple to make and literally take minutes, meaning they are a great option to take round to people’s houses when you want to offer something other than a plant!

And of course free from gluten, dairy and refined sugar 🙂

Ingredients
1/2 cup tahini
1 cup ground almonds
6 tbsp maple syrup
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
Salt
Sesame seeds

Method
Preheat the oven to 180 and line a baking tray with parchment paper.

Mix all the ingredients except for the sesame seeds in a bowl.

Roll into small-ish balls and put on a plate in the fridge for 15 mins.

Remove from the fridge, put them on the parchment paper and press them down into cookie shapes, making sure they’re not too thin.

Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Put them in the oven for around mins. With my fan oven this was the perfect amount of time. They should be just starting to brown around the edges but no more as they continue cooking once they’re out.

Place on a cooling rack and wait till they’re cool to store in an airtight container.

With love & health,
Lauren