When I served this at a dinner party last week as little finger food bites I heard people say this was like crack so good. Not that we’ve ever tried crack but you get the gist.
The crunchy sesame caramel shards are sweet and slightly salty and super yummily filled with toasted black and white sesame seeds. A perfect holder for fluffy salty whipped black pepper feta.
At the party I served it with fresh garden cress, which adds a peppery freshness of its own. When I took the pictures I didn’t have any cress left so I made a batch with chili flakes and dille. Also delicious!
Whipped Feta with Black Pepper Served on Sesame Caramel Shards
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Loading...Ingredients
- Sesame brittle
- 1/4 cup black sesame seeds
- 1/2 cup white sesame seeds
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup light corn syrup, maple syrup or Dutch schenkstroop
- 50 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
- Pinch of salt
- Whipped feta
- 250 g fresh feta, at room temperature
- 100 g cream cheese, at room temperature
- Zest of 1 lemon (optional)
- A good pinch of black pepper
- To serve
- Up to you, for example: Garden cress, chili flakes, spring onions, dill. Whatever tickles your fancy!
Instructions
Sesame brittle
Preheat the oven to 190°C.
Spread all the sesame seeds out on a lined and rimmed baking tray and roast for 10 minutes, stirring halfway through, make sure they don't burn.
Set 4 pieces of baking paper ready to work with as soon as the caramel is ready. Also get out your rolling pin.
In a heavy based sauce pan add the sugar, syrup, butter and salt and stir constantly until the sugar has dissolved. Let boil on low heat for 5 minutes until just starting to turn a little darker, but make sure it doesn't burn, it will go quickly towards the end! (see notes)
Remove from the heat and stir through the sesame seeds.
Place 1 piece of the baking paper in a heat proof surface and pour half of the sesame caramel onto a sheet. Cover with another sheet and immediately start rolling it out with a rolling pin as thin as you can.
Leave like this to cool and repeat with the other 2 baking papers and the rest of the sesame caramel.
Let cool completely before breaking into shards.
Whipped feta
Crumble the feta and cream cheese into a food processor and add the lemon zest (if using) and black pepper.
Puree for 3-4 minutes, scraping down the sides when necessary, until feta is super creamy.
Serve on the sesame brittle with your topping of choice!
Notes
- It's important to boil the caramel sauce until it starts to darken, this will make sure your caramel shards are nice and crispy as opposed to fudgy. They're still super tasty when fudgy though so don't worry if that happens!
- These are great to make ahead of time. The feta and brittle will both keep for up to days (even longer if you have to but upto 2 days they're at their best). Store them in air tight containers and keep the feta in the fridge of course
