You Might Have Everything in Your Pantry to Make Tahini Brownies This Weekend

Every Friday morning, Bon Appétit senior staff writer Alex Beggs shares weekly highlights from the BA offices, from awesome new recipes to office drama to restaurant recs, with some weird (food!) stuff she saw on the internet thrown in. It gets better: If you sign up for our newsletter, you'll get this letter before everyone else.

Turn off the radio, make brownies

When you find out you need to “bring a simple dessert” four hours before a dinner, you make tahini brownies. I chopped up a Tony’s bar (70%), melted it in the microwave with oil and tahini, and then added it to the stand mixer where I’d whipped up eggs and sugar. And because this recipe is coincidentally gluten-free, you toss in some cornstarch and cocoa powder and call it a batter. Dump into pan, add a plop of sweetened tahini, swirl around with a chopstick, and the fudgy, dense, nutty brownies were done in 26 minutes. A huge hit.

Want this letter before it hits the website? Sign up for our newsletter!

Get the recipe: Gluten-Free Tahini Brownies

Regular-sized people with over-sized food

Never trust a turnip larger than your own head.

Take a pitcher, it’ll last longer.

Take a look at that leek.

Huge cabbage.

Huge pretzel.

Huge scoop.

Good lordy, that gourdy.

When did avocados start shrinking?

I have no idea why this man is so bronzed and oiled but...that’s a big peanut.

Unnecessary food meme of the week

Speaking of going big

I loved this article on the rise of “maximalist cheese boards,” which have always perplexed me—why the excess? Where’s the room to even slice the cheese?! But Ruby Tandoh “sails the salami rivers,” tries a cheese that “tastes like an old country church,” and finds that people express their love through food in many ways. A platter of cheese just happens to be one of them.

Read it at Taste: Who Are These Maximalist Cheese Boards For?

Unnecessary food feud of the week

This week, Alex Delany highly recommended his favorite soft beverage: Diet Coke. Gasp! Le horror! The Bon Appétit drinks editor likes a common soda pop?! Our editor in chief likes frozen pizza! A Test Kitchen editor swears by boxed brownie mix! Anyway. People contain multitudes. I used to sit diagonal from Delany and Basically editor Sarah Jampel and we used to cheers our cold cans of Diet Coke like I imagine the knights at the round table did with mead or whatever. Christina Chaey said she’ll drink DC til someone pries it out of her clutches. (bleak, Chaey). Kate Fenologio was once told by a 7-11 employee that she was the reason the soda fountain was always running out of Diet Coke. But others don’t share our passion. Joseph Hernandez and Sasha Levine raised their hands to let me know they’d rather drink [literally anything] than Diet Coke. Emily Schultz is “team reggo coke.” Bryan Fountain is “more of a Fanta guy,” and Hilary Cadigan said it gave her a side effect I can’t print here for propriety’s sake. Carla Lalli Music cracks open a DC once a year: “It’s a very special occasion, the flavor is truly vile—sweet sweet gasoline—but in a wonderfully nostalgic and peaceful way.”

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit