Halva Tahini Brownies

I might have mentioned  before (a million times) that I like Greek food. And when we went to Greece this summer, I had a great time browsing the little supermarket for random ingredients. I ate a lot of honey and sesame bars because they have a million different types there.

I also went to the supermarket specifically looking for halva - it’s like a crumbly nougat made with sesame seeds/tahini. I love the flavour of sesame and I’ve used tahini to great effect before in brownies. 

Halva was an obvious choice for a brownie topping – sweet but not overpoweringly so, with a beautiful nutty undertone and a mildly sticky texture when cooked. You can get halva in the UK but the only ones I could find were in a speciality food stop, therefore expensive. Obviously heading to Greece to get some was the next step.

Ingredients

• 200g butter
• 200g dark chocolate
• 4 medium eggs
• 250g caster sugar
• 95g plain flour
• 40g cocoa powder
• Pinch salt
• 75g chocolate chips
• 2 tbsp sesame seeds
• 4 tbsp tahini paste
• 200g vanilla halva, chopped into 2cm chunks
• Extra choc chips and sesame seeds, to finish

Method

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees and prepare a traybake tin (mine is about 25cm by 35cm).

Melt together the chocolate and butter and set aside to cool for a few minutes.

Break the eggs into a separate bowl, add the caster sugar and whisk until pale and thick, a good few minutes.

Pour the cooled chocolate over the eggy mixture and fold gently. Add in the flour, cocoa and salt and fold in gently.

Throw in the chocolate chunks and sesame seeds and mix well.

Pour into the prepared baking tray.  Spoon the tahini paste on top and scatter over most of the halva.

Marble by dragging a chopstick through the brownie batter and topping.

Scatter over the rest of the halva, some choc chips and some sesame seeds.

Bake for about 25-30 minutes until firm on top.

Allow to cool in the tin, then slice into generous brownies.