Melt-in-your-mouth tehina cookie recipe

You won’t be able to keep these halvah-like cookies around for long. And they couldn’t be simpler to make.

We never thought to use tehina (or tehini as you might know it) in baking, but this recipe produces the most meltingly delicious cookies you can imagine.

If you’re looking for ways to use up your flour before the Jewish Passover holiday coming up, try them. It takes only 25 minutes and six steps from raw ingredients to placing them in the cookie jar. Advice: hide a few for yourself before they disappear.

Tehina Cookies Recipe
Yield: about 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

200 grams soft margarine or butter

1 cup sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup tehina. If there’s a layer of oil floating on top of the jar, stir in back in.
2 cups plus 4 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
Optional: 2 tbsp. pine nuts and powdered sugar

Method:
Preheat the oven to 160 C – 325 F.

1. Cream the margarine and the sugar together.

2. Add the vanilla and the tehina and blend again.

3. Combine the flour and the baking powder; add to the tehina mixture.

4. Form balls the size of walnuts and place them on a greased baking sheet. The dough is dry and crumbly, so squeeze it together to make the balls.

If adding the optional pine nuts, do it like this: form one cookie ball; take 2 or 3 pine nuts into your left palm, and with your right hand, press the ball onto them. Reverse it onto the baking sheet. If the ball crumbles slightly, just squeeze it back into shape with your fingertips.

Bake for 13-15 minutes. Do not bake longer. The cookies need a little moisture to retain their shape and not crumble. Cool the baking tray on a rack, and don’t touch the cookies for at least 5 minutes. If they’re handled while hot, they will fall apart.

Dust with powdered sugar when they’re cool.

Enjoy!

Other green-inspired recipes you’ll enjoy:

• Creamy Eggplant Soup
• Two Winter Salads
• Preserved Lemons

Photo of Tehina Cookies by Miriam Kresh