Bethany's Vegan Kitchen

I’m sharing two spooky recipes for Halloween this year. First up is a garlicky black houmous made with black chickpeas and a black tahini. This houmous has more of a nutty flavour to it, coming from both the black chickpeas and black tahini. It’s perfect with crackers, eaten as a dip, served with salads or eaten on toast. The second recipe is for chocolate chunk black tahini cookies. They’re deliciously soft, chewy, nutty cookies stuffed with dark chocolate chunks. For both recipes I’ll be using homemade black tahini, so I’ll include how I make that. You can always opt to buy black tahini if preferred

Black Tahini

You;ll need;

1. 250g raw black sesame seeds
2. Three tablespoons of neutral oil
3. A pinch of salt

Method;

• Start by heating a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat, don’t add any oil into the frying pan. You’ll have to toast the seeds in batches, to ensure they all toast as evenly as possible
• Once the pan has warmed up, add a layer of sesame seeds. Toast the sesame seeds for about three or four minutes, stirring often, until they become fragrant. I ended up doing around four batches to toast all the seeds
• Once one batch of sesame seeds have toasted, pour them into a shallow dish and allow them to cool down. Keep going until you’ve toasted all the sesame seeds
• When the toasted seeds have cooled to room temperature, transfer them into a high speed blender. Pulse blend until you have a chunky, gritty mixture of the processed seeds
• At this point, add the oil and a pinch of salt, then blend again until you have a smooth mixture
• Now set the tahini aside, and move on to making the houmous

Black Chickpea Houmous

You’ll need;

1. One 400g tin of black chickpeas, drained and well rinsed
2. Two tablespoons of black tahini
3. Two cloves of garlic, minced
4. The juice of one lemon
5. Salt to taste
6. 125ml of cold water

Method;

• All you have to do is pop everything into a blender/food processor and blend it until it’s smooth. You may have to pause every now and then to scrape down the sides of the blender. Once it’s blended, add salt to taste. I served the houmous topped with some black olive “spiders” and a few more black sesame seeds.

Store the houmous in an airtight container in the fridge, I find it generally keeps quite well for up to a week

Black Tahini Chocolate Chunk Cookies

You’ll need;

1. 150g black tahini
2. 100g plain, all purpose flour
3. 90g golden syrup
4. 100g dairy free chocolate chunks, I used Dark Creamy Hazelnut Crunch Bar by Tony’s Chocoloney

Method;

• Add the tahini, flour, golden syrup and chocolate into a mixing bowl. Mix until the dough starts to come together
• Keep mixing until you can form the dough into a large ball with your hands
• Evenly divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll each piece into a ball with your hands. Press down on each ball of dough to form them into a cookie shape. They won’t spread in the oven, so you’ll have to shape them appropriately before baking
• Place the cookies onto a lined baking tray and bake at 180°C/160°C for 8-10 minutes
• Once they’re baked, leave them to cool on the baking tray for at least five minutes before transferring them to a cooling tray
• When they’ve cooled to room temperature, store them in an airtight container

I decorated the cookies with a light dusting of icing sugar, although it’s not necessary. You can swap the golden syrup for any other syrup, I find that maple syrup and agave nectar both work well too. You can also swap the plain all purpose flour for the same amount of gluten free flour to make these cookies gluten free