Tahini- Miso Cookies タヒニと味噌クッキー

As we mentioned before we are big fans of “savory” cookies which will go well with wine rather than as a dessert. My wife has made a few in this category before. Recently she I found her searching for savory cookie recipes. During this search, she came across “Tahini-Miso cookies” at a website called “kitchen stories”. Since we had tahini and miso, it was a “no brainer” to try making these. This recipe uses a lot of white sesame seeds. Good thing I just got a large jar of white sesame from Weee.  The cookies are great with a taste of saltiness from the miso and nuttiness from the tahini and sesame seed coating the surface of the cookies.

I will ask my wife for how this was made.

Ingredients (shown in the picture below)
225 g flour
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
115 g butter (room temperature)
220 g brown sugar
100 g sugar
80 g white miso paste
80 g tahini
1  egg
1½ tsp vanilla extract
100 g sesame seeds

Directions:
Add flour, baking soda, and baking powder a bowl and mix to combine, then set aside. Add butter, brown sugar, and sugar to a separate bowl and beat with a hand mixer until very light and fluffy, approx. 5 min.

Add miso and tahini to the butter-sugar mixture and mix until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix again. Add egg and vanilla and mix just to combine, then add some of the flour mixture and mix in on low speed. Add remaining flour and mix just until combined.

Add sesame seeds to a bowl. Use an ice cream scooper to scoop some of the cookie dough, then add to the bowl of sesame seeds and cover the ball with the sesame. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat until all the cookie dough is gone, (first picture below). Then cover the baking sheet with plastic wrap and chill dough for at least 2 hours, or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350F. Remove some cookies from the baking sheet so there’s enough room for them to spread out while baking. Bake the cookies for approx. 8 min., then use a fork to gently flatten them a bit. Continue baking for 8 - 10 more mins. Let cool completely.

I did not remove any of the cookie dough from the baking sheet as advised in the instructions. They seemed evenly spaced even if they spread a bit. In addition, the instructions said to flatten them with a fork half way through which implied they needed that additional step to spread at all. I tried flattening them as instructed but it was a complete waste because the soft dough just stuck to the tines of the fork making a mess of the cookie so I stopped and just put them back in the oven to finish cooking. At the correct time I opened the oven door and…SURPRISE! The cookies had flattened into an almost solid mass as shown in the picture below; completely unexpected. (Why in the world did the original recipe require flattening them during cooking when they would do this on their own?)

Nonetheless I was able to break them apart into irregular cookie like shapes. Despite the shapes they tasted pretty good. These were not really savory cookies but they also were not as sweet as a desert cookie. They had a slightly chewy texture and deep rich flavor from the miso and tahini. The sesame added an additional nuttiness but they tended to continually fall off the cookie creating a bit of a crumby mess. I’m not sure I will use them next time.