Thin and chewy walnut halva cookies remain soft days after baking. These are great for gift giving, especially during the holiday season.
Are you on team soft and chewy cookies or team crispy and crunchy cookies?
If you prefer the former, keep on the reading. For crunchy cookie fans, I suggest you hop on over to these recipes: pecan caramel bark, Filipino polvoron, and chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies.
This is a chewy cookie with crunchy elements. These halva cookies may have a soft base, but they’re loaded with chopped toasted walnuts to add textural variety and bite!
Thank you, Ottolenghi for introducing the world to the deliciousness of tahini and halva. Since purchasing the Ottolenghi’s Sweet cookbook, I had made these tahini and halva brownies almost a dozen times.
This newfound love for halva is the inspiration behind this new cookie recipe. These walnut halva cookies use one of my old chocolate chip cookie dough recipes and transforms them into something unique and exciting!
Key Ingredients
This recipes uses your standard cookie dough ingredients with the addition of one not so common ingredient.
- All-Purpose Flour : Use a digital kitchen scale to weigh your dry ingredients for best results. You prefer to measure by volume (cups), please use the spoon and level method to portion out flour and other dry ingredients.
- Cinnamon : A touch of ground cinnamon adds warmth and flavor. Feel free to omit, if desired.
- Walnuts : Lightly toast walnuts before adding to dough. Warming up the nuts releases oils thus intensifying the flavors. If you don’t like walnuts, substitute in hazelnuts or pecans.
- Halva : Known by numerous other names such as halawa, helava, halvah, halva is a sweet treat eaten all over the world from Middle Eastern countries to Eastern Europe and Asia. More detailed information below.
What is halva?
Halva is a dense, fudge-like confection made from seeds or nuts. It is most popularly made with sesame seeds (tahini) and sweetened with honey.
Other varieties of halva include floss halva (also known as Turkish Cotton Candy or shredded halva). There are also halvas made with grains, primarily semolina.
Where to buy halva?
I bought mine at Super King. It’s a giant international supermarket with chains all over Southern California. They have an entire wall selection of halva varieties from chocolate flavored ones to ones with pistachios and raspberries.
My local Ralphs and Vons also carry a few halva products. And if all else fails, halva is readily available for sale online. A quick Google search will lead you to dozens of options.
Halva Variations and Options
Halva comes in a variety of different flavors. For these walnut halva cookies, I stuck with the standard or “plain” tahini flavor. The nuttiness of the sesame seeds blends well with the walnuts and brown sugar.
If you love chocolate, chocolate halva would also be fantastic in this recipe!
Halva is usually sold in large slabs. The whole halva can be chopped into smaller pieces or broken in rough chunks by hand. It may be a little crumbly. Simply toss those sweet crumbs along with the cookie dough.
How to Mix Cookie Dough
This easy to make cookie dough may be mixed together by hand or with the aid of a stand mixer (or electric hand mixer).
Dry Ingredients. Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.
Wet Ingredients. Beat together butter and sugar until smooth. Add egg, yolk, and vanilla.
Combine. Then, add mixed dry ingredients. Fold in walnuts and halva chunks.
Portion dough. Use a size 24 scoop to portion out dough. Equal sized cookie dough balls result in evenly sized baked cookies. More importantly, equal size portions cook at the same rate.
Bake. Place cookie mounds on parchment lined baking sheets. Bake for about 12 minutes just until the edges of the cookies are set. Immediately sprinkle sea salt flakes on top. Cool on sheet for about 10 minutes before transferring to wire rack.
BAKING 101: Cookie Scoop Sizes
The number size of a scooper is equal to how many scoops it would take to fill a quart container.
For example, size 1 scoop takes one scoop to fill a quart. A size 20 scoop would take twenty scoops to fill a quart.
In other words, the large the scoop number, the smaller to scoop capacity. Or, the smaller the scoop number, the bigger the scooper size.
Baking Tips
- Rotate baking sheets midway through baking. Oven usually have “hot spots.” Rotating the baking sheets ensures even cooking.
- Cool cookies! Halva cookies will be very fragile directly out of the oven. Allow hot cookies to cool in the baking sheet for about 8-10 minutes. The cookies will regain their strength and structure as it cools. Then, transfer cookies to wire rack to further cool to room temperature.
Cookie Storage
Kept in an airtight container at room temperature, these cookies will remain soft and chewy for at least 4 days! Although, I’m not sure they stay around that long. These cookies usually disappear within 24 hour of baking my house!
To ensure cookies remain softer longer, add a slice of white sandwich bread (or a terracotta sugar keeper) to your container with the cookies.
Related Recipes
Walnut Halva Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour, (180 g)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ cup unsalted butter, (115 g), softened
- 1 cup light brown sugar, (200 g), packed
- ½ cup confectioners' sugar, (70 g), unsifted
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup toasted walnuts, (120 g), roughly chopped
- 5 oz halva, (142 g) , chopped into chunks
- Maldon sea salt flakes, , for sprinkling
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mat. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together butter, brown sugar, and confectioners’ sugar. Scrape down bowl as needed to ensure thorough mixing. Beat for about 3 minutes until mixture is smooth and creamy.
- Add egg, egg yolk, and vanilla. Mix until incorporated.
- With the mixer running on slow, add flour mixture in three additions. Mix until there are no longer any dry streaks of flour. Scrape down bowl as needed. Fold in walnuts and halva chunks until distributed.
- Use a size 24 cookie scoop to portion out cookie dough. Place cookie mounds on prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 2-inches apart.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking, until edges of cookies are set. Immediately sprinkle sea salt flakes over cookies. Cookies will be VERY soft directly from the oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 8-10 minutes before transferring to wire rack.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like this recipe? Rate & comment below!
Soooo good. I even made my own halva and added some toasted sesame seeds. My kids absolutely love them!
it is Halava, i have eaten this most of my life.
I don’t remember having had halva cookies before, I’m curious to taste them.