These Chocolate Chip Tahini Shortbread Cookies Are Instant Classics

I’m just gonna say it: my ideal Friday evening this month includes Love, Actually and these cookies. The common denominator? They’re both instant classics. If you need a new Christmas cookie recipe to add to your lineup, these Chocolate Chip Tahini Shortbread Cookies are for you. Think classic shortbread with the flavor turned up several notches. The nutty richness of sesame lends an extra savory note to these sweet and salty cookies, while chopped dark chocolate speckles indulgence throughout. And the dough freezes beautifully—just wrap up the log of dough in a double layer of plastic wrap and pop in the freezer so that you’re ready for cravings whenever they hit.

These were one of the standout recipes in our Holiday Cookie E-book (you can download it for free right here!) Daphne Oz created these beauties, and they’ve quickly become one of our family’s favorites. They’re a modern take on a Christmas classic, and I love the contrast of savory tahini and sesame seeds with the buttery sweet shortbread. Scroll on for exactly how to make these Chocolate Chip Tahini Shortbread Cookies.

What are shortbread cookies?

Shortbread cookies are a classic holiday cookie. These buttery delights are known for their crumbly texture and richness. The foundation of these surprisingly simple cookies consists of three primary components: butter, sugar, and flour. High-quality butter is essential, giving these cookies the perfect amount of richness that defines shortbread. Sugar adds a touch of sweetness and contributes to the cookie’s delicate texture, and the flour acts as a binder.

How to make these shortbread cookies

This recipe takes elements from the classic cookie recipe and adds a savory twist. Here’s what you need to make them:

  • Sesame seeds: for a unique textural element and a visually appealing bite.
  • Demerara or turbinado sugar: to give these cookies the perfect amount of sweetness.
  • Butter: unsalted butter will do the trick here, but go for a high-quality option.
  • Tahini: this is the key ingredient—it adds that certain something that sets these cookies apart.
  • Confectioners’ sugar: for the perfect light texture.
  • Flour: to hold your cookies together.
  • Bittersweet Chocolate: because what’s a chocolate chip cookie without it!

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Description

The nutty richness of sesame lends an extra savory note to these sweet and salty cookies, while chopped dark chocolate speckles indulgence throughout. 


  • 1/2 cup (71 grams) toasted sesame seeds
  • 1/2 cup (71 grams) black sesame seeds
  • 1/2 cup (110 grams) demerara or turbinado sugar
  • 1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1/2 cup (128 grams) tahini plus 1-2 tablespoons, well-stirred and divided
  • ? cup (76 grams) confectioners’ sugar
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 ? cups (200 grams) all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons fine sea salt
  • 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, fairly finely chopped but not completely into a sandy consistency (about 3/4 cup)

  1. Combine the toasted sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, and demerara sugar in a medium baking dish and set aside.
  2. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or using a hand mixer add the butter, ½ cup tahini, and confectioners’ sugar. Mix on medium speed until smooth and combined, 1-2 minutes. This will look like a delicious tahini spread. Add the vanilla extract and mix for another couple of seconds until combined. Add the flour and sea salt and continue beating until a dough forms. The dough will be crumbly but easy to press together with your fingers.
  3. Now is the time to add the chocolate! Be sure your chocolate is fairly finely chopped, this ensures that when you go to slice the chilled dough into rounds the dough doesn’t fall apart when slicing because the chocolate chunks are too large.
  4. Add the chocolate to the stand mixer and gently turn on low speed until the chocolate is almost all combined. The dough will still be crumbly at this point but should be easy to press together using your fingers.
  5. Remove the stand mixer bowl and start by drizzling 1 tablespoon of tahini over the mixture. This will help you form the dough into a log more easily. Fold gently with a rubber spatula until the dough comes together more. This won’t look like classic chocolate chip cookie dough but should come together more easily while still retaining some crumbles.
  6. Divide the dough in half and form each half into a log that’s 5 inches x 1 ½ inches. If the dough is still difficult to form, add another tablespoon of tahini to the dough and shape again.
  7. Roll each log of dough into the sesame seed mixture until completely coated. Gently press to adhere the sesame seeds and sugar. Wrap the dough logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or preferably overnight until the dough is completely chilled and hard.
  8. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Slice the cookies into 1/2-inch thick slices and place the cookies 2 inches apart on the baking sheet. When slicing the cookies, the chocolate pieces may cause the dough to break in places, gently press the dough back together and form into a circle. Bake for 12-15 minutes on the center rack until just lightly golden and dry to the touch. Repeat with the second baking sheet.
  9. Remove and allow to cool on the baking sheet completely to set. Store in an airtight container for up to 4 days.

Notes

These cookies freeze well. Just wrap the log of uncooked dough in a double layer of plastic wrap, then freeze for up to a month. When ready to bake, remove from freezer, slice, and continue with the recipe.

  • Prep Time: 20 min
  • Chilling Time: 4 hours
  • Cook Time: 15 min

Keywords: holiday cookies

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies Are the Ultimate Cozy Season Treat

I know what you’re thinking: does the world really need another chocolate chip cookie recipe? And I’m here to say absolutely. Because what’s better than having a chocolate chip cookie recipe for every moment and occasion? Some are thick and gooey, others thin and chewy. Some use a mix of milk and dark chocolate and others swear by adding extra flaky salt or walnuts. What makes the best cookie is truly up to your taste and preference—and of course, the season. That’s why today, we’re exploring what I consider the perfect fall treat: pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that are spicy, buttery, and totally delish alongside a cup of hot cider.

Cozy season is here, y’all—and there’s no better way to celebrate than with fuzzy socks, hot beverages, and sweets that warm you from the inside out. Ever since making Sarah Kieffer’s pan-banging chocolate chip cookies, I’ve been obsessed with the extra thin and chewy cookie. And I won’t lie: it’s my absolute preference over a thicker cookie. I love how crisp the edges get as the cookies spread in the oven. The chewy middles with shards and pools of dark chocolate add that rich satisfaction while being balanced out with extra salt. For me, this is the ultimate chocolate chip cookie.

Ingredients for Chewy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Browned Butter. Nothing screams cozy fall baking like browned butter. You’ll notice its nutty flavor, and it adds a delicious dimension of flavor to your baked goods.

Brown and White Sugar. As you may know, both sugars serve different purposes with chocolate chip cookies. Brown sugar helps with chewiness while white sugar adds a crispy texture.

Pumpkin Puree. The pumpkin adds moisture and the slightest sweet flavor while also giving the cookies that extra autumn orange tint. Note: Do NOT use pumpkin pie mix. Make sure you are using only pumpkin.

All-Purpose Flour. I highly recommend measuring with a scale when baking for 100% accuracy. If you don’t have a scale, make sure to fluff up your flour, spoon it into your measuring cup without patting it down, and then scrape off the top to level.

Pumpkin Spice. While this is a chocolate chip cookie, the pumpkin spice shines through in this recipe, adding warmth and spice to the cookies. You can make your own or use store-bought.

Chocolate. For chocolate chip cookies, I prefer using chopped bar chocolate over chocolate chips. Chocolate chips are made with stabilizers which prevent them from spreading or melting as a chocolate bar would. Use good-quality chocolate and chop both ways on the diagonal, both into large chunks and little shards that will spread throughout the entire batter of the cookies.

Salt. I tend to add extra salt when making other baked goods because I prefer desserts that lean slightly on the savory/salty side. Use the salt in the batter and add flaky salt over the top when the cookies come out of the oven. Bonus: It helps bring out the chocolatey flavor.

How to Bake Better Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’ve learned a lot from all the chocolate chip cookie recipes I’ve made over the years. This is how to ensure you’re making the very best batch:

  1. Salt is your friend. The easiest way to bring out the best in your chocolate chip cookie is to incorporate salt into each layer. Salt the dough and add a little flaky salt under the cookie as well as over the cookie when they come out of the oven. If you love your sweets sweet, go ahead and ignore this advice. But for the best balance of flavor, don’t skimp on the salt.
  2. Chill the dough. I tested this recipe by baking the dough right away as well as after chilling the dough for an hour. There was a noticeable difference in flavor and texture between the batches, and I liked the chilled version better. Letting the dough rest in the fridge ensures proper hydration of the dough and helps everything meld together. Because this recipe doesn’t use an egg, chilling also helps maintain structure during the bake so that the cookie doesn’t spread too much.
  3. Don’t overdo the chocolate. I know that sounds like wild advice for a CCC, but especially when chopping from a bar of chocolate, it’s very easy to end up with bites that are basically just chocolate. And while that’s not really a problem—especially for my fellow chocolate lovers—these are cookies. We want to taste the cookie-ness of them in every bite. We also want the warm spices in these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies to shine—so exercise a little restraint with the chocolate.
  4. Tip: To ensure you get aesthetic (and tasty) pools of chocolate on top of each cookie, once you’ve balled up your dough, dip the tops in chopped chocolate pieces.

Storage Tips

Chocolate chip cookies will last a week when stored in an airtight container. Alternatively, you can bake a few cookies and freeze the dough for fresh cookies ready at a moment’s notice. Here’s how to make it happen:

Prepare the cookie dough as written. Scoop the dough into balls onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet in a single layer. Place the cookie sheet into the fridge to chill for at least an hour, the move to the freezer and freeze until the dough is solid. Once the dough is frozen, remove the dough balls from the cookie sheet and place into a Ziplock freezer bag or an airtight container. Frozen dough balls can be stored for up to two months.

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Description

Spicy, sweet, and of course—chocolatey. These little delights are the perfect fall treat.


  • 1/2 cup butter, browned and cooled to room temperature
  • 100 grams brown sugar (1/2 cup)
  • 80 grams white sugar (1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons)
  • 60 grams pumpkin puree (1/4 cup)
  • 185 grams flour (1 1/2 cups)
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
  • 50 grams chopped dark chocolate

 

  1. In a small stovetop pot over low heat, add the stick of butter. Let the butter melt, it will soon start to bubble and make splattering sounds. Stir occasionally, keeping your eye on the butter. As the butter stops bubbling, stir occasionally until it just starts to take on a brown color. It’s very easy to burn the butter, so keep a close eye on it. Remove from heat as soon as color starts. Pour butter into a small bowl and let cool to room temperature.

  2. In a large bowl, add the cooled brown butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar. Stir to combine with a spatula until light in color. Add the pumpkin puree and stir until the sugar granules have dissolved. The texture of the wet ingredients should be light and smooth.

  3. Add the flour, baking soda, salt, and pumpkin spice to the bowl. Slowly incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet. The dough will feel dry at first, so continue to press the flour into the wet ingredients until smooth. (Sometimes I’ll use my hands here to help combine everything.)

  4. Once the dough comes together, add the dark chocolate and stir to combine. Once the dough is combined, using a tablespoon scoop, scoop out 1 ½ tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball. Flatten slightly between your palms and place onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat until all the dough has been scooped. Cover with plastic wrap or a parchment sheet and a kitchen towel.

  5. Place dough into the fridge and chill for about an hour.

  6. Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place cookies at least 2 inches apart. You may bake in two batches to prevent crowding the pan.

  7. Bake for 10 minutes. At the 10-minute mark, tap the baking pan onto the oven rack to de-puff the cookies. Bake for another 2 minutes, then tap again, bake another 2 minutes, then tap again, for a total bake time of 14-15 minutes.

  8. Remove from oven and tap once more on a kitchen towel over the counter. Let cookies cool for five minutes on the pan, then transfer to a cooling rack and cool completely.

  9. Top with salt, enjoy!

I Tried 6 Grocery Store Dark Chocolate Bars—This Is the One I’ll Keep in My Candy Drawer

In the battle between milk and dark chocolate, I’d choose the former every time. And yet, here I am, knee-deep in dark chocolate bars trying to name the best dark chocolate of them all. Let me be clear: it’s not that I don’t like dark chocolate, I’m just often not as fond of some bars’ bitterness or overly fruit-forward flavors. When a craving strikes, I prefer smooth, milky chocolate. But as I’ve discovered, all it took was a simple taste test of the best dark chocolate brands to change my tune.

My brother is more known in our family for his defining characteristic of snacking on cacao nibs and cocoa. (Yes, really.) He thrives on dark chocolate. My dad lands somewhere between the two of us, and my mom, well, she could take it or leave it.

After a heated debate on the merit of dark chocolate, my brother and I decided it was time for a taste-off. Much like my previous bake-off competitions (these ginger molasses cookies are still a favorite and don’t let anyone tell you pumpkin bread is only for the fall), we approached this competition among the top-tier dark chocolate brands with some guidelines to crown the best tasting dark chocolate.

Ranking Guardrails

All chocolates were tasted at room temperature and served with palate cleansers in between. We stuck to only the 70% (ish) chocolate bars that were available in the HEB candy aisle. (Sadly, while I’m told the Valhrona Dark Chocolate Bar is well worth the hype, it was unfortunately not readily available.)

Because my brother is a dark chocolate connoisseur I asked him what he looked for in ranking these bars. Here’s what he said.

Flavor

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting any of our selected stack of chocolate bars to taste differently from each other. But through the process, I was pleasantly surprised to discover distinct differences in flavor. For the purposes of our taste test, we were looking for a bar that provided its own unique flavor without leaning too sweet or fruity. We wanted a balance of flavors with the cocoa. The true test: which is the bar that we go back to for another square? (Let’s be clear, none of us are professional chocolate tasters, so we just wanted chocolate that tasted good.)

Texture

We all agreed that our favorite chocolates are smooth on our tongue and not chalky or chunky. A properly tempered chocolate should have a nice snap to it.

Aroma

I only added this one to the ranking list because my brother said it was important, but I feel like it’s self-explanatory.

At the end of our tasting, I actually found myself with a few new additions to my rotation, a few that I will reserve for chopping into chocolate chip cookies, and a few that I will stick to buying the milk chocolate counterparts. So without further ado, here are the results of our quest to name the best dark chocolate of them all.

Taste-Off: The Best Dark Chocolate

6. Green and Black’s Organic 70% Dark Chocolate

I am a Green and Black’s Milk Chocolate STAN. I live for it and stock up when they go on sale at Whole Foods, so I was hoping for this one to rank higher than it did between the three of us.

The flavor was only OK, leaning toward slightly smoky and astringent, according to my brother. The texture was also just fine, and we were hoping for a bit more smoothness as we were eating it. Overall, this one fell into last place because it was exactly that—fine. I will continue hyping up the milk chocolate variety though and save this bar for some imminent chocolate chip cookie baking.

5. Ghirardelli 72% Twilight Delight

I live for the Ghirardelli milk and caramel-filled varieties. Sign me up all day every day. But this bar sadly missed the mark. My brother noted that the flavor actually leans smoky and has an almost licorice note to it. My dad said it was slightly bitter with a fruity aftertaste. My brother did call out that he did not enjoy this bar’s aroma, reminding him of over-roasted coffee. (Feel free to DM him to discuss the importance of aroma in chocolate.) Again, this bar is nothing to write home about but will find a nice home in some cookie dough.

4. Chocolove 70% Strong Dark Chocolate

Flavor-wise, this chocolate bar was alright. All three of us agreed that the fruitiness of this bar was just mild enough to be pleasant. However, texture-wise, we had some qualms. The chocolate didn’t melt smoothly over our tongues as we ate it. I wouldn’t call it quite chalky, but overall we just wanted more textural enjoyment. I have not tried the milk chocolate counterpart here but will be adding it to the list to compare since I liked the flavor of this one.

3. Lindt 70% Dark Chocolate

We are Lindt chocolate truffle fans in my house, so I was excited to try this bar. The flavor definitely leans toward the milder and sweeter side. As a milk chocolate lover I personally didn’t mind it, but my brother called it slightly weaker in flavor than some of the other bars. The texture though was smooth with a nice snap to the bar. We enjoyed this bar overall and came back once or twice for an extra square.

2. Tony’s Chocolonely 70% Dark Chocolate

I actually hadn’t tried any of Tony’s chocolate before this, though I have spotted it in the aisles of Trader Joe’s. This chocolate had the boldest and fruitiest flavor of all the bars we tried. It was bright in flavor, which my brother really enjoyed. Personally, as a milk chocolate person, I would have liked it to be a bit milder. But overall, I thought the flavor was good for dark chocolate and enjoyed the smooth texture. We do wish the bar was slightly thinner, as the large chunks do make it hard to break off a piece. And of course, this bar was a clear winner when it came to aesthetics.

1. Perugina 70% Bittersweet Chocolate

Honestly, this bar was the underdog of our group, so all three of us were shocked that we enjoyed it the most. It was the only bar we ate in its entirety during our tasting. What set it apart was the flavor. It has nutty, coconut-infused tasting notes while the texture is super rich and creamy. This bar wasn’t bitter at all, mild enough to convert any dark chocolate hater, and the perfect bar to reach for when the chocolate craving strikes. I was shocked to find a dark chocolate bar that I would actually buy again and that my brother liked it as well. Lesson learned, never count out the underdog.

Final Thoughts

Overall, when it comes to finding the best dark chocolate, there’s something out there for everyone. And I’ll even give my brother his I-told-you-so moment. Now that I’ve tried a few different kinds of dark chocolate, I’m able to point to things I liked and disliked about each one that keeps me open to trying new ones to have on hand.

While these are just the selection from the grocery store, I do have some more gourmand and smaller bean-to-bar choices that I love:

Fossa Chocolate Salted Egg Cereal

Marou Tien Gian

Madhu Chocolate Dark Rose

Qantu Goat Milk

And if you’re looking for that perfect bar with the prettiest wrapping, consult our list of the best “status chocolate bars.” Because when the folks you love are craving something sweet, why not give them the best—and most aesthetic—option?

This post was originally published on February 20, 2021, and has since been updated.