Chocolate lovers this one’s for you. Today is World Chocolate Day after all. Say what?! I too only heard of this magnificent day recently. I mean if there is one food day to really mark, I think chocolate deserves it, right? Or maybe ice cream. Well it’s a toss up. In any case, we’re marking today over here in Istanbul with a recipe that I think is not only perfect for this “holiday” but also highlights a few specialties of our current locale. These Sea Salt Tahini & Helva Brownies are bananas. Like whoa good and definitely not for the faint of chocolate heart.

Tahini (tahin in Turkish) is a beloved ingredient here. It’s used to make cakes, sauces, as a drizzle on molasses for a breakfast spread and for one of my favs tahinli çörek. The last one’s basically a sweet tahini filled cinnamon roll sans the cinnamon or icing. It’s sooooo good and wins over every person I’ve had try it. And then the other popular treat made with none other than tahin, is helva. This is basically a nougat-like confection made of tahini and sugar and then often other mix-in like pistachios, hazelnuts or sometimes marbled with chocolate. And that brings me to these brownies.

Most of the time I’m a brownie purist. LIke maybe some walnut or pecans in there, but as far as oreos or cheesecake or other such mix-ins, I like to leave this classic just as is, maybe with only a sprinkling of sea salt. We did that here today. Salt and chocolate are a natural pair. But I have to say, so are chocolate and tahini or furthermore, helva. What an awesome combo this is. Creamy, a little nutty, a little sweet umami shall say. It works, really works.

I first came across this recipe in my beautiful book, Sweet, by Yotam Ottolenghi. I like this book so much, it made the cut when we moved from LA to Istanbul. It’s so pretty, with that fig cake on the cover which you can see in this post, and has so many drool worthy recipes. And it finally took this quarantine time for me to make the brownies I bookmarked ages ago. But once I did make them, I was hooked. I made a few changes, but still kept true to the ingredients, and changed the method of putting this together for how I like to make my brownies so they are extra gooey and not cake-like.

What is great about these, is you can do it all essentially in one bowl and use a hand mixer, a stand mixer or just some good ol’ arm power and a whisk and spatula. It starts with mixing some melted butter and two sugars with a little salt. Then adding some eggs and vanilla. Then carefully folding in the flour, cocoa powder, chopped chocolate and chopped plain helva. Then a nice drizzle of tahini and more chopped chocolate goes on top before baking and they are sprinkled with a little sea salt once out of the oven. If you chill your tahini you will get more of an obvious drizzle on top, but it doesn’t matter so much as far as taste. Let these cool to slice into bars more easily and if you really want to try something delish, pop one into the freezer for a bit. I love cold brownies and was so delighted when this recipe stated how good they are semi-frozen. Wasn’t sure anyone agreed with me on that.

If you’ve never tried tahini with something sweet or aren’t familiar with it or helva, I really suggest getting your hands on some and having this recipe be your first introduction to both. You will not be disappointed and may just have a new sweet treat on your list of favs. I’ve seen helva or halva readily available in the states, as well as tahini, and probably can be purchased in many other parts of the world. So hopefully you can give this a whirl wherever you are. And please please let me know if you do in the comments below or tagged on Instagram. Happy baking and more importantly, happy chocolate day!

**recipe adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbook, Sweet.