Molly Yeh's Chocolate Tahini Cake with Tahini Frosting
December 20, 2016

Chocolate Tahini Cake. Courtesy Rodale.
Makes one 8-inch layer cake, one 13-inch by 9-inch sheet cake, or 24 mini cakes
active: 15 min
Not many things in life are better than a rich, moist chocolate cake covered in buttercream and doled out with birthday songs and birthday wishes. But as my old timpani teacher used to say, “If it ain’t broke, fix it anyway.” Chocolate cake, meet tahini.
Chocolate cake and tahini go together fantastically, but not like bacon and eggs or peanut butter and jelly: They’re not splitting the spotlight 50/50. Chocolate cake and tahini are more like my favorite ice dancing pair, Meryl Davis and Charlie White. Meryl is the cake, the star, the real-life Disney princess who has the power to make everything she touches turn to solid gold (see: Dancing with the Stars season 18). While Charlie’s the tahini, the support, the knight in shining armor on his horse to meet his princess.Yeah, he’s pretty freaking magnificent on his own, but tahini kind of needs to latch onto something in order for him to deserve a spot on the podium, like chickpeas to make hummus, or sugar to make halva, or an outstandingly terrific chocolate cake. So when the two come together and chocolate cake is able to shine her absolute brightest thanks to the strong support of a smooth nutty tahini, an X-factor happens that makes this pair one of the best in the world.
Someone once told me that they “don’t like cake,” but that they “love this cake.” The tahini here sends an otherwise classic chocolate cake right over the edge into no-going-back territory
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