Baking Advent Calendar day 9

For Baking Advent Calendar day 9 I’m sharing tahini lemon biscuits. I had a chance for a quick today and as the request was for sweet, but not too sweet, I went for these. Tahini is a paste made from sesame and if that were the key ingredient these biscuits could be quite bitter. However balanced with the sugar and lemon zest the flavour is mellowed and the result is a quite delicate shortcrust biscuit.

If you’re reading this in the US or Canada you’ll probably want to call these cookies. I’ve been asked a few times since I started posting if there is a difference between the two and I really don’t think that there is. We do get cookies in the UK but they tend to be sold in places like Starbucks or Costa and from my experience are closer to cakes in texture than biscuits. It’s also worth remembering that you can get savoury biscuits as well and I’ll be making some of those in the run up Christmas so that we can eat them with cheese.

This one is a perfect midweek quick recipe with the whole thing done and dusted within 30 minutes.

Ingredients – makes approximately 20 biscuits. It depends on what size you want your biscuits to be.

• 120g unsalted softened butter
• 120g tahini *
• 120g caster or granulated sugar
• Zest of two lemons
• 240g plain flour
• 1tsp baking powder

Method

• Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a baking tray with baking parchment
• Cream the butter, tahini and sugar together until pale. Then mix in the lemon zest
• In a separate bowl combine the flour and baking powder. Stir this into the wet mixture, mash with the back of a spoon to combine.
• Roll out 20 balls of the mixture and place them on a baking tray. Use a fork to gently flatten each ball to a disc about 1cm thick. Don’t worry if they crack at the edges. It will add to the rustic look once they’ve been baked.
• Bake for 12 to 15 minutes. The edges should be golden brown when you take the biscuits out of the oven.
• When the biscuits first come out of the oven they will be very crumbly so it’s important that you leave them on the baking tray to cool. Once cooled they will be firm and easy to move.

* As tahini is quite a strong taste it might be worth reducing the amount the first time that you bake these. You can always add more on a future bake.