Skip to content

Halva

Ingredients

Original recipe was written as:

  • 1.5 cups tahini
  • 1.5 cups sugar
  • 0.5 cups water
  • 1 tsp kosher salt

Instructions

Put the tahini in a bowl and stir in the salt.

Line a small pan with parchment paper and spray with oil.

Put the sugar and water in a small saucepan and gently bring to a boil. Using a candy thermometer, keep heating until the temperature reaches 250F.

When the sugar reaches 250F, remove from heat and, working quickly, pour into the bowl of tahini and stir vigorously. As soon as the mixture is combined and starts to pull away from the sides (takes < 1 minute) pour into your prepared pan and allow to cool.

Variations

  • coat in chocolate
  • mix toasted sesame and/or pistachios into the tahini before adding the syrup
  • sprinkle salt flakes on top

Notes

For our altitude, target temperature is at most 240F (2F reduction per 1000’ elevation).

Tahini doesn’t seem to conveniently come in 1.5 cup containers and using volume rather than weight is annoying/messy too. From research a reasonable general ration is going to be 6:5:2 for tahini:sugar:water. The only tricky adjustment is the salt. I used Maldon and think their suggested amount is too much, but definitely wouldn’t omit.

Soom brand Tahini was nice but maybe not as punchy as I was looking for.

Taste and texture was better after 24 hours. Suspect it would be better if put into a closed container to rest.

First batch was probably too firm. Was hard to check the syrup temperature TBH as the saucepan I used was too large making the syrup shallow. Definitely use the smallest pan. Try 1) targeting 238F and 2) easy on the heat so the syrup temperature doesn’t rise uncontrollably fast.

Nutrition

Estimated, per serving

  • Servings: 20
  • Serving size: 1 piece (~40 g)
  • Calories: 170
  • Protein: 3 g
  • Carbs: 19 g
  • Fat: 10 g
  • Saturated fat: 1.5 g
  • Fiber: 2 g
  • Total sugar: 15 g
  • Sodium: 120 mg