Chewy tahini raisin cookies with Ras el Hanout

Chewy tahini raisin cookies, featuring one of my favourite spice mixes, commonly used in Moroccan cuisine: Ras el Hanout. Move over pumpkin spice, there's a new winter flavour.

Ras el Hanout is often used in savoury dishes but works wonderfully in sweet dishes too and, dare I say it, even better than pumpkin spice. The name in Arabic means "head of the shop" and implies a mixture of the best spices the seller has to offer.

It’s gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, and nut free and you can easily make it low carb and keto.

A perfect marriage, with some tweaks

I got my inspiration from one of my favourite Moroccan chefs (Nargisse Benkabbou, aka @mymoroccanfood) and the legendary (Nicole Keshishian Modic, aka @kalejunkie) - the recipe is a perfect marriage between Nargisse’s chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and Nicole’s life changing tahini chocolate chip cookies.

I adapted the recipes to make it gluten free, nut free, and low in sugar. And I replaced the chocolate chips by raisins because the complexity of the Ras el Hanout and the bitterness of tahini seem to work much better with the mellow sweetness and juiciness of raisins.

Ingredients

• 1 cup tiger nut flour (or almond if not nut-free)

• 1 cup liquid tahini

• 1/2 cup Lakanto sugar free maple syrup (or maple syrup/molasses)

• 1 egg (or flax egg if vegan)

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 1 cup of raisins, soaked in hot water and drained

• Sea salt flakes

• 3 tsp Ras el Hanout

• Few scoops of collagen peptides (optional but adds protein)

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 175C.

• Mix all ingredients except the egg (or flax egg) and baking soda.

• Cool in the fridge for at least 30 mins.

• Add the egg and baking soda.

• Shape into cookie.

• Sprinkle with sea salt flakes.

• Bake at 175C for 12 mins (they should look a bit undercooked). Let the cookies rest for at least 15 mins.