Sesame Honey Bites & Sesame Molasses Bites

Last week when I posted 5 Lies You’ve Been Told About Calcium, I shared a chart showing the amounts of calcium in foods. Sesame seeds topped the list! So when you eat these, ditch the calcium supplements that day – you won’t need them (hooray for eating food rather than supplements!).

I googled “sesame candy” and came across a recipe that I tweaked enough I can call it my own. I ended up with two recipes since I had both white and black sesame seeds on hand.

I teased those of you on Facebook earlier when I posted photos of the end result (sorry!) – so here are the recipes you have been waiting for!

Sesame Honey Bites

1. Butter well a 9″ square pan. Set aside.

2. In a large cast iron skillet set to medium heat melt 2 TBSP butter (I use KerryGold pastured butter).

3. Add 2 cups white sesame seeds (mine were raw which is why they are so white). Stir until coated in butter.

4. Heat for 5-7 minutes or until some of them are starting to turn golden. The calcium isn’t destroyed by heat, so feel free to brown yours a little more.

5. Oops! I meant to take a photo of the nice creamy white blob of honey, but I already started mixing it in when I thought to take a photo of this step. Anyways, this step is: Add 1 cup honey and stir in the sesame seeds until melted throughout. We lovelovelove this honey which is found here: Tropical Traditions Organic Raw Honey. We just got 6 jars delivered today…yum.

6. Add 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves. Stir until equally distributed through the sesame seed and honey mixture.

7. Transfer to the buttered pan (step 1) and smooth out as flat as you can. You don’t have to be too particular, it’s easily molded once it cools. Let set until warm, no longer hot, about 15-20 minutes. (This photo came out nice and golden looking due to flash).

8. Using a spatula on the side of the pan (I used a small 1″ spatula) run along the edges and overturn onto a large sheet of parchment paper.  You may need to help it along. Don’t sweat it if it doesn’t fall perfectly flat or aligned, it’s easily reshaped.

Cut into 1″ strips.

9. Cut the strips to make 1″ squares. Transfer to parchment paper-lined airtight container. I had to make several layers inside my container, but they all fit.

Makes about three dozen. Hard to get an accurate count because my kids kept snagging them (okay, I was responsible for half a dozen myself!).

They are as delicious as they look. They are soft and somewhat pliable, but stay all in one piece. They aren’t hard at all like those crunchy candies – they would be if you used sugar, though, but I used all honey.

Now aren’t these more appetizing than a calcium tablet?

Now for the molasses recipe…

Sesame Molasses Bites

Follow the above recipe with these exceptions:

Use black sesame seeds for this recipe.

In step 2 replace the 2 TBSP butter with 1 TBSP butter and 1 TBSP coconut oil. I like Tropical Traditions Coconut Oil (they are currently having a B1G1 sale on their pints!).

In step 5 replace the 1 cup honey with 1/2 cup honey and 1/2 cup molasses.

YUM!

Shared on: Fat Tuesday