St.Nicholas knows everything – Tahini nut cookies

Hey there!

 

Hüt chund de Samichlaus! – Today’s St. Nicholas day!

In Switzerland St. Nicholas Day (Samichlaus) is actually one of the most exciting holiday’s for little kids. I think I used to be more excited for St. Nicholas day than Christmas. Well, St. Nicholas actually came and talked to us, Santaclause didn’t. Every year on the evening of the 6^th December my sister and I were told to have some kind of song ready so we could perform it to St. Nicholas who would be visiting us later that night. We were always extremely scared as he would be reading out all the things we did wrong during the year. It used to be so strange that he knew all these things about us… The only odd thing about the omnious St. Nicholas was that he wore the exact same shoes as our parent’s friend. Very strange.

 

Years later my sister and I realised that this hadn’t been a coincidence, yet that of course my parent’s friend was pretending to be our St. Nicholas. Oh well, we all have to grow up, don’t we? Still, to celebrate St. Nicholas day, I decided to bake a batch of cookies yesterday. I actually just sort of combined flavours I liked. For once, I wasn’t inspired by a traditional recipe. I just threw my favourite ingredients into a bowl and what I ended up with was this delicious tahini nut cookie. For once this is probably not all that healthy, not gluten-free, yet still egg and dairy free. Christmas cookies don’t need to be healthy, at least in my opinion. It’s Christmas time, people, time to indulge.

 

Anyways, here’s the recipe:

 

 

 

• 50g ground almonds
• 50g ground walnuts
• 50g spelt flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp locust bean gum
• 50g cane sugar
• 20g vebugan (vegan butter made of canola oil and cacao butter)*, room temperature
• 40g tahini
• 50g agave
• ½ vanilla bean

* can be substituted with coconut oil

 

 

1. Add the ground nuts, flour, cinnamon, locust bean gum, seeds of the vanilla bean and cane sugar into a mixing bowl.
2. Pour in the tahini, agave and add the vegbugan.
3. Mix the dough. You’re best off starting with stirring it together with a spoon and then use your hands to knead it together until you can form it into a ball.
4. Wrap the dough in cling film and let it sit in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. This will make it a tad easier to work with as it is a fairly sticky dough.
5. Preheat your oven to 200°C. Roll out your dough. Tip: Put the dough in between two layers of cling film, this will prevent it from sticking to your countertop and the rolling pin.
6. Cut out the cookies, chose any shape cookie cutter you like.
7. Bake for 10 minutes in your preheated oven.
8. When your cookies have finished baking let them cool completely. They’ll still be very soft when you remove them from the oven, so don’t try to transfer them into a cookie tin just then.

 

Voila, that’s it, simple, easy, delicious. Those cookies were just a combination of all the ingredients I love and I actually don’t think I have ever tried a similar cookie. Yep sometimes (well, pretty often, to be honest) I just throw ingredients together and they somehow happen to turn out delicious. So people, try them, vegan tahini nut cookies, DELICIOUS.

 

Happy Samichlaus!

Bisous