So.. my experiments with black tahini continues! And today I have a black cake recipe for you made this slightly bitter tahini type. This cake is very chewy in the middle and quite crusty on the outside. And to “spice” things up, there is also some brandy in it.
This beautiful pitch-black cake is a version of tahinopita, Greek tahini cake. I added my own twist to the traditional recipe by changing the regular tahini to black tahini and adjusting the spices a bit. (And yes, I listened to Back to Black by Amy Winehouse a lot while making this cake!)
Considering the texture, this is no traditional cake. The dough is very crumbly. You will see below in the instructions that when you put the dough in the cake pan, you will have to use something to spread the dough in the pan and smoothen it. As you can see, I just used my hand, the dough is that much solid.
The cake gets harder and crustier the second day, while inside of it stays chewy. I liked eating my slice by dipping into fresh tea, like a biscuit! But you can just eat with some coffee and tea without dipping as well, of course! Enjoy your slightly weird coloured new cake!
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Ingredients:
Difficulty: ★☆☆ (Easy)
(makes 1 cake in 24cm cake pan)
Printable PDF-recipe (no photos)
5.5 dl (or 2 cups + 3 tbsp + 1 tsp) all-purpose flour
5 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp ground allspice
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2.5 dl (or 1 cup) black tahini
2.5 dl + 4 tbsp (or 1 1/4 cups) granulated white sugar
4 tbsp brandy
zest and juice of an orange
For decorating the top after baking:
powdered sugar
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1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease a 24cm cake pan and line the bottom with baking paper.
2. In a medium bowl, mix all dry ingredients (the first 7 ingredients in the list above) and set aside.
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, put black tahini and sugar and beat until well combined.
4. Add brandy, zest and juice of an orange and continue beating. Scrape sides of the bowl with a spatula if needed.
5. Add dry ingredients and beat until all ingredients are incorporated. Again, scrape sides of the bowl if needed.
6. Transfer the dough to the cake pan. The dough will be very crumbly, don’t worry, nothing like a regular cake batter. Spread the crumbly dough to cover whole pan and smoothen the surface: you can, for instance, use your hand, back of a spoon…
7. Put the cake in the oven, in medium rack and bake for about 45 min, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. After that, take it out of the oven and let it cool in the pan down to room temperature. The cake, when it’s fresh, can still be very crumbly so when it’s down to room temperature and you want to take it out of the pan, be careful. Dust the surface with a thin layer of powdered sugar. Enjoy!
My Dear Kitchen in Helsinki 
I don’t have black tahini, only normal light tahini. Have never even seen it in shops. So can I try with it? Instead of using white sugar maybe brown sugar then, perhaps the colour would be nice brown then. Quite nice recipe, no fat at all 😊👍🏼
Yes, in fact, the original version of tahinopita is made with tahini you have. But if you are using that tahini then you can cut down the amount of sugar to 1 cup (4 tbsp less than my amount here), because normal tahini is not as bitter as black tahini. Enjoy!
Thank you Asli! I’ll make this tomorrow. On saturday I made your zucchini and corn bread and it became our favorite! It’s (actually it was 😉) juicy but crunchy too at the same time. Hardly can wait your next recipe!
So you don’t use honey in vegerecipes? We have own bees because of pollination, we grow quite much our own food. The honey comes there aside and most of it have to take away, bees don’t manage to survive over winter only by honey, because it’s too heavy for their digestion. Italian honeybees are not fitted naturally to finnish winter. So I change honey to sugar for them.
So this was for all of you who might judge me for eating honey 😄
Oh it’s lovely to hear that you liked the zucchini bread! About honey: personally i am not vegan, but i like cooking & baking vegan recipes as a challenge (and i also want to show a variety of different diets to my readers, eating the same recipes myself and giving myself a few vegan days a week). I’m still learning about veganism and i see that most vegans do not eat honey so i also do not use honey in my vegan recipes – however, people can always substitute according to their wishes. And it’s so cool and great that you’re growing your own food! – I wish I could do that too, but it’s a bit hard here in Finland heheh, especially in a tiny apartment and in a climate of loooo..ng winters. 😳
Just loved the recipe :)
Perfect!
This looks amazing. Totally inspired to go out and buy some black tahini right now!
Yayyy!!