But two entries in just a few days is probably more than I will keep up with, but what the heck, why not…
I found some tahini in the fridge languishing. One of the things I am trying to do is use up things that are getting a bit long in the tooth, and make space for any sudden shifts that might need to happen in case of appliance failure. After all, except for the freezer, the appliances are all ten years old. No chock-a-block full fridge or freezer anymore. That might sound counter intuitive to my last entry about pantry stacking, but what I am aiming for is shelf stable, rather than frozen or cold-kept with respect to preparing for economic madness.
Tahini, yes, that was where I was going. Anyway, tahini is as bitter as a brand new tire. I won’t reveal if I have a good angle on that comparison, but will say that a licked spoon from the tahini jar is not likely something a person is going to repeat.
I acquired said jar from my friend Justine, who buys interesting stuff and gives away anything that is not suitable for her household. That lick of a spoon gave me a very obvious clue as to why this was not up to snuff. It is an unsweetened tahini with lemon. Talk about gilding lily with respect to bitterness with the lemon. Seriously.
Here I am with 15 ounces of perfectly usable tahini that I am not going to sully any prepared items I have on hand with. As a result, I started searching recipes (using my anti-AI setting because that “ish” pisses me off) and landed on a tahini cookie recipe. Double bonus: by the look of it, I could use up the last of my Manuka honey and some almond flour I had been wanting to turn into something other than a time keeper for rancidness.
I didn’t have high hopes to be honest.
The recipe called for mixing the tahini and honey until smooth. Manuka honey resists such silliness with a robustness of a well done steak. My mixer sounded like I was asking it to extract water from a stone. Deciding that I had come too far to give up, I found the vinyl cooking gloves I have moved twice over the years and hoped that they were up to the task. I now have very sore forearms. But it worked. For insurance purposes with respect to the bitterness, and to make the lump of tahini/honey more malleable, I added some light corn syrup and gave the whole thing a 20 second whirl in the microwave.
Lo and behold, it worked. Added the dry ingredients (I found the idea that the tahini and honey were considered ‘wet ingredients’ and bit of stretch, they were more like ‘cement ingredients’, but I persisted) and rolled up little rounds of dough, dredged them in sesame seeds, flattened them, and baked them off.
Are they still a touch ‘earthy’? Oh indeed. But a swirl of vanilla buttercream makes them shine. I keep about 4 cups of buttercream around because the man of the house likes it.
As a continued project to use the items compromised but not destroyed by the freezer debacle, I also made some rhubarb-cherry fruit bread. Another candidate for the buttercream, because who wouldn’t? That went over very nicely.
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