Vegan and gluten-free tahini cookies with chocolate chunks, made with oat flour and brown sugar for an easy and healthy-ish sweet treat.
While these aren’t quite a classic chocolate chip cookie, they’re a truly excellent grown-up version. With slightly bitter sesame paste and caramel-like brown sugar, these chocolate chunk tahini cookies taste a bit like chocolate studded halva. And gluten free, why not?
Ingredients
- Runny tahini
- Brown sugar
- Milk (dairy, or dairy-free for vegan cookies)
- Vanilla extract
- Oat flour
- Baking soda
- Fine salt
- Dark (semi-sweet) chocolate
Method
Start by preheating the oven, and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk the tahini, sugar, milk, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. It’s pretty thick, so use a strong whisk or a hand mixer on the lowest speed.
Stir in the oat flour. Don’t worry about over-mixing – there’s not gluten to overwork here – and use a wooden spoon to make sure the flour is fully incorporated to make a dough.
Stir in the chocolate chunks (or chips). Your dough might look a little oily, even though these are oil-free cookies. That’s normal! It’s the natural oils from the tahini.
Use a large (2 tbsp) cookie scoop to scoop the dough onto the prepared baking sheet. If you don’t have a scoop, then use a large spoon and make mounds instead. Don’t flatten.
Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes, or until the edges are just set, then cool and eat!
Tips and Notes
Kris, who wrote the recipe, recommends that the cookies cool fully on the pan before removing them because they’re quite delicate. I (Alex) made them a couple times for the photos and found that they weren’t too terribly crumbly, but it’ll depend on your tahini and oat flour. Once fully cooled, they should be relatively solid for a gluten free cookie.
If you like a big hit of salt with your cookies, sprinkle some flakey sea salt onto each cookie a couple minutes after they come out of the oven.
To make your own oat flour, blend rolled oats in a food processor or high speed blender until a fine powder forms. Alternatively, you can get it from bulk stores and many grocery stores pre-ground.
Substitutions
Want a sweeter cookie? Use milk chocolate chunks instead of dark chocolate, or go for a mix of dark and white chocolate. You can use chocolate chips or chopped chocolate, whatever you have on hand. Or go wild with any of these add-ins for chocolate chip cookies.
Any nut or seed butter can be used in place of tahini as long as it’s quite thin and runny. If you don’t have quite enough tahini or prefer a milder taste, we recommend almond butter. Peanut butter is good too!
Coconut sugar can be used in place of brown sugar, but it’s best with about a teaspoon of molasses or dark honey mixed in to help imitate the higher moisture content of brown sugar. We don’t recommend using white or cane sugar.
We know how expensive vanilla is these days, and cinnamon makes an excellent substitution in this recipe. Use ½ a teaspoon of cinnamon, or go for cardamom or pumpkin pie spice instead.
More Gluten Free Recipes
Almond Flour Biscuits
Oat Flour Crackers
Chocolate Chunk, Raspberry, and Almond Cake
Almond Flour Banana Muffins
Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies
If you make this recipe, let us know by tagging @baked_theblog + #bakedtheblog on Instagram! We love to feel like we’re in the kitchen with you.
Recipe
Chocolate Chunk Tahini Cookies
Description
Equipment
- baking sheet
- Parchment paper
- Mixing bowl
- Whisk
- Spatula or wooden spoon
- Measuring cups and spoons or a digital kitchen scale
Ingredients
- 1 cup tahini, runny
- ¾ cup brown sugar, loosely-packed
- 3 tablespoons milk, plant or dairy
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¾ cup oat flour
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon fine salt
- ½ cup semi-sweet chocolate, roughly chopped
Instructions
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
- In a large bowl, whisk together the tahini, brown sugar, milk, and vanilla. Set aside.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the oat flour, baking powder, and salt. Add dry ingredients to wet and stir with a spatula or wooden spoon until almost fully combined.
- Fold in the chocolate chunks.
- Using an ice cream scoop, scoop the cookie dough out in 2 tablespoon rounds and place them 1-½ inches (4cm) apart on the baking sheet.
- Bake until the edges are golden and the centres have just set, about 10-12 minutes.
- Cool completely on the baking sheet before eating. Store the cooled cookies in a sealed container at room temperature for 3-4 days, or freeze up to a month.
Myra says
Using soom chocolate tahini and 1/2 c. Dried tart cherries is a great addition
Alexandra Daum says
Sounds delicious, thanks Myra!