Sesame Candy

I have this very distinct childhood memory of my dad handing me sesame candy wrapped in clear cellophane whilst we retrieved the car from the garage. I don’t know where he got them, probably some candy distributor near his office on Lower Broadway [there was no Tribeca yet]. They were so yummy, sweet, crunchy, toasty, and very simple. I haven’t had any since childhood and these days I don't know that I would trust a factory made product as most likely they also, yes, process nuts.

So what to do with a surfeit of organic rice bran syrup and organic sesame seeds in the cupboard and a lovely childhood memory? Make sesame candy of course. And it’s gluten-free. And nut-free. And dairy-free. It has two ingredients. Seriously. Ok three if you include heat. And so easy to make. I took a break from my desk and in ten minutes I had candy cooling on my windowsill.

There are several variations on how to make it from a few different cultures . I bet Bureka Boy has a recipe too.

A few caveats: this is the recipe I made, a variation of it. I halved it by eyeball but I don’t recommend that because the texture isn’t quite right. And to be perfectly frank, I choose the rice syrup because the honey I have is raw and expensive so I wanted to save it. But the candy has a slightly but not wholly unpleasant bitter after taste: could be the sesame seeds, which tasted that way raw, or the rice syrup, maybe that happens when it cooks down. And I only cooked it to soft-ball stage, perhaps it should have cooked longer because they aren’t really hard candies but soft wilt-y things. Next time I will choose honey and do the recipe correctly, to hard-ball stage.