Tehina shortbread rounds

I mentioned that I made tehina shortbread rounds in my last post. Making tehina shortbread has been on my to-do list for a long time now but I never really got round doing it. And I didn't want to make it last week but it ended up being tehina shortbread anyway. What I really wanted to do was make regular shortbread and use a plastic cookie mould I bought in Jordan 4 years ago. The friend I wanted to make them for (the same one I made the strawberry tartlet for) bought the exact same mould but as far as I know he hasn't been able to produce pretty cookies either. I say either because I had the same problem, I tried out the mould soon after I bought it but I couldn't get the dough out of the mould. So after 4 years I thought I'd give it another go....didn't work :( again the dough stuck even though I floured the mould. So I was stuck with shortbread dough.... I thought regular unflavoured shortbread dough was was a bit boring so I just added ¼ cup of tehina and mixed it in. I chilled the dough for about 20 minutes and rolled it out in order to make tehina cookies.
The cookies have a pleasant slightly bitter tehina taste. Definitely not your regular shortbread cookies. There's not much sugar in this recipe so the cookies weren't very sweet. You have to love tehina to love these cookies though because they really do taste of tehina. N texted me that he thought the cookies were a bit too tehina-y for his taste. But when I talked to him a couple of days later he told me that he liked them better the next day (or he got used to the taste ;)
I have some more of the dough in the fridge and I'm still thinking about using it is some kind of dessert....not completely sure how and what though.



Tehina shortbread rounds (adapted from The Ultimate Cookie Book by Catherine Atkinson)

200 g (6 oz / ¾ cup) flour
25 g (1 oz / 2 ½ tbs) cornflour
50 g (2 oz / ¼ cup) caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
115 g (4 oz / ½ cup) butter, diced
¼ cup tehina

Preheat the oven to 160°C (325°F).
Sift the flour and cornflour into a bowl. Add the sugar and mix it in. Rub in the butter. Add the tehina and knead into a dough. Form a disk shape and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to chill for about 20 minutes.Roll out the dough between two sheets of baking paper until about 1 cm (½ in) thickness. Cut out the cookies and transfer to a baking sheet lined with baking paper.
Bake the cookies for about 30 minutes or until just pale golden. Sprinkle with caster sugar and allow to cool on the baking sheets.