What to Bring to the Party – Live with Chef Nicco

Live Cooking Class: Zesty Lemon Loaf + 7-Layer Mediterranean Dip
July 17 at 4pm PT / 7pm ET
🍋🧆 Sweet meets savory in this summer double feature.

Join Homemade live as we cook two standout recipes, side by side: a bright, moist lemon loaf topped with creamy tahini frosting, and a bold, colorful Mediterranean dip layered with hummus, labneh, marinated veg, and herby baked pita chips. It’s a sweet-savory pairing that’s picnic-ready and party-perfect.

✨ What You’ll Learn:
The secret to extra-lemony cake with a balanced tahini glaze
How to make ultra-smooth hummus and quick-pickled shallots
Techniques for layering flavor and texture in both sweet and savory bakes
How to bake pita chips that actually stay crisp

👩‍🍳 Chef’s Tips:
Zest your lemons right into the sugar and rub it in for full citrus power. Blend hummus while the chickpeas are still warm—game-changer. And don’t panic if your tahini frosting splits—just add a splash of water and stir it back to creamy perfection. Layer your dip with care (no soggy spots!), and flip your pita chips halfway for that golden crunch.

Whether you’re hosting, gifting, or snacking solo—these recipes are big on flavor, easy on effort, and perfect for summer.

🔔 Subscribe and click the bell to get notified when we go live
📌 Register to get the full recipes here: https://homemadecooking.com/class/what-to-bring-to-the-party/
🍋 Thanks to our sponsor Mighty Sesame!

[Music] Hello. Hi everybody. Welcome to Homemade. My name is Niko. So excited to be here with all of you today. Uh today I am joined by our chef in the chat, Remy. Hi Remy. Hi everyone. Happy to be here. Today we are partnering with Mighty Sesame and we are so excited to show you and talk to you about the wonders of tahini. Uh we’re live today on YouTube. Give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel. We’re always excited to cook with you guys. Uh so check out all of our videos uh that we have on the channel. Um and give us a like. Today we are making what to bring to the party. What a perfect class for this time of year. Lots of summer gatherings happening. work friends, with your regular friends, whatever it might be. We’re here to give you some awesome ideas about what you can bring that’s unique and something that’s a little different than your standard party dishes. Uh the recipes we’re going to be doing today, we’re not just doing one, but we’re going to give you two awesome ideas of what you can bring to your next summer gathering. Uh so, we are using tahini today. And so, I’m really excited to show you a way to incorporate this in both a savory and then a sweet application. Uh, and so first up, we are doing a take on the classic seven layer dip, except we’re leaning into some Mediterranean flavors there. Think colamada olives, a little bit of feta cheese on top of there, some Greek yogurt, and an incredibly smooth hummus that we’re going to talk you through the process of how to make a really awesome hummus at home. After that, we are going to roll into a lemon cake where we’re going to make an awesome tahini frosting that’s going to go on top of that and show you a way to use tahini in a sweet application that maybe you’ve never used before or maybe you’re new to tahini al together and we’re going to talk about so many awesome recipes and the virtues of using tahini in your cooking at home. All right, let’s talk about the flow of the class and then we’ll jump in and start working. So, first up, we’re going to work on our seven layer dip. We got multiple projects that are going to kind of happen at once. We’re going to get some pita chips working. We’re going to get those in the oven. Then we’re going to start cooking some chickpeas. Uh and we’re going to use canned chickpeas today. So it’ll be a kind of a fast cook here. Uh but we’re going to show you how to make some really smooth hummus out of those chickpeas. While that’s cooking, we’re then going to roll into some vegetable garnish for our seven layer dip. We’re going to make some quick pickled shallots. Show you a really fast and easy technique of how to do that. And then we’ll make a lovely little summer salad here with some heirloom tomatoes, some cucumbers, a little bit of lemon juice. We’ll marinate that. Uh following those projects, we will finish by making our hummus and then building our seven layer dip. After that, we’ll roll into our uh pastry portion of the class where we’ll mix up that cake, talk about the process there, and then we’ll make that awesome tahini frosting and show you how to garnish it up and finish that. All right, ready to jump in? First thing we want to talk about is tahini. So folks that might not be familiar with tahini, this is a delicious sesame uh basically think of this as like a sesame butter. You know, we take hold sesame seeds and roast them and then whip them and get a really smooth delicious product. Uh in the chat today, we would love to hear what are your favorite dishes to make at home with tahini. So Rey’s going to be uh hitting me with those questions. So please tell us some of your favorite things you’ve ever made with tahini. We’ll share some of our own in just a little while. All right, we got to get moving on our pita chips here. So, first thing, I have some nice round pas here. I’m just going to cut these into four pieces with a knife here. And then what we’re going to do is we’re going to tear them open. One of the keys to making a really nice pita chip is to get as much surface area as possible. And so, what I mean by that is often times when you buy pa, it is in this lovely pocket where you can just kind of open and tear these apart. And so, the size, it’s really up to you. I prefer kind of the quartered pieces of pa. I think it makes her for a really nice dip. Think of it like the size of a tortilla chip. Uh, and we’re just going to kind of open those up, tear them apart, and then dress them up with a little bit of olive oil and some herbs here. And today for our pita chips, we are going to be using some dried herbs. And maybe you have some dried herbs in your pantry or your spice cabinet that maybe they’ve been sitting there for a while, you don’t use them super often. This is a really great way to utilize some of those spices. is we’re going to use a little dried basil and dried parsley. And we’re also putting a little bit of uh garlic powder in there as well just to make a nice kind of toasted garlicky herby pita chip. So once we finish tearing these apart, we are going to mix up our olive oil. And that olive oil, we’re going to add in those spices. And we’re going to season up with a little bit of salt. Uh when I’m making pita chips, I really like to try to get as much get every piece of pa covered in this oil so they get a little crispy in the oven. And so for this, we’re going to use a brush where we can actually brush on the pa or excuse me, brush the oil onto our pita chips just to make sure that we’re evenly coating it. You know, in the past, maybe some folks have done in a bowl. I find it much easier to make sure that we get really kind of get everything on there, utilize a pastry brush in the kitchen, and kind of paint it on there. So, we’ve got our olive oil here. I’ve got my spices, that a little bit of dried basil, a little bit of dried parsley, we’ve got garlic powder, and I’m just going to whisk that up here with my uh with my brush. Then I’m just going to arrange my pita chips here on the baking sheet. And I’ve got two handy just in case I need a second one. We want to make sure that they’re not sitting on top of each other. This way, we’ve got all that nice surface area that we’ve exposed by opening these pas up. And then we’re also able to make sure that they’re not we don’t want to shingle them too much or have them stacking on top of each other. They will not roast super nicely. Remy, any good questions or uh tahini favorite dishes in the chat? Yes, I’m learning a lot of people um use tahini in baked applications, which we’re using today, but I had no idea. So, I’m hearing brownies, cookies, just like people love to use tahini. Super cool. Any savory applications that people like to do? I mean hummus of course like we’re doing today. Um Shai uses it in lie of mayo. So that’s pretty cool. I love that. Love that. Yeah, that sounds delicious and a really fun way to uh use sesame. Yeah. Why do you think it works well in like baked goods? So tahini uh because it is, you know, I like to think of it basically as like a sesame butter. Um I find that it’s really nice when you’re using it in a baking application. It adds a little bit extra fat in there. Uh, and so when I make a I make a tahini chocolate chip cookie that I just absolutely love. Uh, and I find that it’s a really it adds a little bit of that extra fat. It adds this note kind of a deeper note of flavor there. Uh, and I just find that it’s really delicious in in in baked goods. It’s kind of a little juniqua. When people eat it, they’re what is this uh why is this a little more delicious than maybe what they’ve had before? And so I always I make a tahini chocolate chip cookie that people just are always asking for the recipe. And it’s a uh it’s a really fun one to bring to a party or to uh just make at home and have all the time. So, I’m just adding a little more olive oil here. I uh want to make sure I get olive oil onto all of my pita chips here. And so, ended up using probably two more tablespoons just to mix up with the rest of the herbs here and spread over my pita chips here. All right, we’ve got this ready to go in the oven. kind of painted them all with a little bit of this olive oil mixture. And then I’m just going to do a little seasoning of salt on top. I put a pinch of salt in that olive oil, but I want to make sure that my pita chips are nicely seasoned. So, just a nice pinch of salt over the top of all of these. And we’re going to get these into a 400°ree oven. About 8 to 10 minutes. We’ll check them and make sure they got a nice crisp on them. All right. So, step one, get those pita chips done because we want them to be cooled down by the time we’re ready to eat our seven layer dip. Next up, let’s get our hummus working. So, today I’m going to be using some uh canned chickpeas for our hummus, but maybe you have some chickpeas dried in your cabinet at home that you want to cook them from raw. Uh, and so we want to show a little technique today that can be utilized for both preparations. uh where I like to take a little bit of baking soda. And so I take a little bit of baking soda. I’m going to put it into my chickpeas here. And I’m going to turn this on and start cooking those chickpeas. And we’re using canned. So these are already cooked. But if you want to do these from raw at home, I like to soak my chickpeas overnight with that baking soda in there. So between a/4 and a half a teaspoon, I put that in my water when I’m soaking my beans overnight. And what it does is it helps remove the skins. And so if you’ve ever had a hummus that maybe was a little bit chunky, uh there’s a possibility that the chickpeas still had their skins on them. And so therefore, you didn’t get this really beautiful smooth hummus. Today, adding that little bit of baking soda in there helps remove those skins from the chickpeas. And then when we go and make our hummus, it’s just going to be extra smooth and not too chunky. So, we’re just going to let these come up to a boil here. We want to simmer these for about 10 minutes. And what that will do here is just make sure we get those last skins off of those chickpeas. Uh, but it’s especially important if you’re going to be cooking your chickpeas yourself. One tip that I will give uh when working with baking soda in uh in this preparation and with cooking beans in general, uh they tend to foam a lot when they’re cooking. And so I always have a ladle and a bowl handy because if it goes boils over onto your stove, it makes a bit of a mess. So I always make sure I got that ladle to scoop off any of that uh foam that comes from using that baking soda and from the protein in those chickpeas. So we got those going over here. We’re going to let that come to a boil and then turn it down to a simmer. About 10 minutes is all we need there. Chickpeas are working now. We’re going to start thinking about making the rest of our seven layer dip. We’re going to do our knife work next. So, few things to cut up here, but we’re going to do a quick pickled shallot. Um, if anyone has some fun things that they like to pickle at home, we’d love to hear that in the chat as well. Uh, pickled onions are one of my favorite things to have in the fridge at all times. They’re great on a sandwich. They’re great on basically, you know, anything that you need a little bit of extra acid on in the kitchen. Do you have any favorite pickles to always have in the fridge, Remy? Yeah, I mean, pickled shallots or onions, it’s it’s a it’s a must. It’s a classic. Yeah, of course. I’m also a big fan of just having some pickled cucumbers in the fridge cuz I think those can be added into, you know, a relish, a salad, a sandwich. Always nice to have around, especially if you make them yourself. And then my third one is pickled peppers. I can’t go without it. I need to have pickle peppers in my fridge all the time. Not too spicy. Okay, I have a dumb question. Is a pickled cucumber not just a pickle? A pickled cucumber is a pickle. But in general, when someone says, “Oh, we have pickles in the fridge.” You think, “Okay, that is a cucumber.” But when you’re talking about having multiple pickles in your fridge, then you can, you know, vegetable specific pickle. We have our cauliflower pickle, we have our cucumber pickle, we have our shallot pickle, etc. Um, so I’m going to go ahead and slice these nice and thin. And the reason I want to go really thin on these is because we’re doing a quick pickle. If you had a little bit more time, there is absolutely uh you could go a little bit thicker if you wanted to, but I find that if we’re doing this quick pickle technique, really more of kind of like a marinated quick pickle. Uh because we’re going to let it sit for about 10 to 15 minutes. But if you have time, do this overnight. Uh let these sit in your fridge. Uh it also takes away one step from what you’re doing today. Uh and so if you want to do it in advance, totally fine. We’re just going to take some red wine vinegar. Pour that up on top of these guys. Some sugar. I’m going to do about a half a teaspoon of sugar to start. And that’s going to help counteract that acidity and sourness in the vinegar. And then a pinch of salt. And this is going to really help kind of bring out a little bit of those juices from the onions. When you salt something, uh salt naturally helps pull out moisture. Uh and so when you do this, it’s going to help pull out a little bit of moisture from those shallots. And then kind of mix with that vinegar, make this quick pickle. I’m just going to take a fork, just kind of get in there and try to break these up as best as I can. And then we’re just going to set these aside and let them uh kind of wilt and pickle in that vinegar. And we’ll go from there. If you have the time, you can always do a uh a hot pickle where you warm up that liquid a little bit and just pour it over the top, especially if you can do it one day in advance. Uh, but for this, this is a really just great technique to quick pickle a shallot, take away some of that harshness of the raw shallot or raw onion and an awesome kind of crunchy little bite that we’ll add in to our seven layer dip. So, we’re just going to set those guys aside. Just want to call attention to our chickpeas for just one moment here. Um, we’ve noticed that they are starting to simmer and we’re seeing some of that foam that we were talking about. It’s a small amount of chickpeas in this pot, so it’s not so much that I feel like I have to remove it. We are going to drain all of this anyway, but I’m noticing that the skins are kind of coming to the top and separating away from the bean, which is exactly what we want to make that super smooth hummus. Going to let those keep going for another 5 minutes while we finish up the rest of our knife work. So, we’re going to make a lovely little summery salad here to go in with our seven layer dip. We have some heirloom tomatoes. And when I’m cutting heirloom tomatoes, I want to uh kind of talk about this little core right here. So, a lot of people cut off, you know, a whole piece of tomato when they’re doing this. And I always like to take, if you’re if you’re uncomfortable using a large knife, use a small pairing knife. Uh, and I like to cut around the core of the tomato here. And this way, I’m not losing any of that really delicious, kind of beautiful tomato. And this way, I can just take out that core, this kind of white part right here. And then what you’re left with is this really nice um tomato that we can cut and use the rest of. There’s also a really fun tool out there called a tomato shark. They’re a tiny little uh almost like a serrated spoon and you use it to pull the cores out of heirloom tomatoes. And I find it’s a really nice tool to have if you cook and eat a lot of tomatoes. I know I will soon be swimming with tomatoes in my garden and I can’t wait to uh can’t wait to eat them. But so that’s how I like to take those cores out. Just like that. And then we can use the rest of the tomato instead of slicing off a good chunk of it. Heirloom tomatoes are expensive. We want to use the whole product. Chickpeas are simmering over here. I’m just going to turn the stove down a little bit, but we’re seeing those skins start to come to the top. Loving what I’m seeing over here. I’m going to just dice these tomatoes and cucumbers. And then we’re just going to dress them up a little bit. Remy, any other good recipes or uh questions in the chat? Not right now. We are just talking hummus, which I know you’re going to get into some more later. I’m absolutely going to get into hummus in a bit. Anyone have a favorite type of hummus to make out there? Well, actually, someone did ask, could we be making hummus with different kinds of beans, like a black bean or something like that? That’s a great question. Uh, and yes, you can make a, you know, we’ll call it a bean dip. Uh, hummus definitely traditionally is chickpeas, but I’ve made a lovely white bean, uh, type hummus before that I thought was really delicious. Served that with some, uh, with some roasted black cod, which was really lovely. Uh, and so I think if you have other beans in your pantry that you want to make a, you know, a hummus-l like dip with, give it a try and let us know how it goes. I think, uh, you could do it with any bean because it will give you that really nice smooth texture. Uh, but the traditional flavor, I’d say chickpeas are the way to go. Also, how are we looking on those pita chips? Giving you a Thank you for the reminder. Let’s take a look. Pita chips are looking great. Not quite done yet. We’ll give those four or five more minutes. Smells really good though. Got all those herbs coming off of it. And then I can smell that little bit of garlic powder we put on there. Just making a delicious pita chip. And a note on those pita chips. You know, if you don’t have those dried herbs and spices in your pantry, use what you have in your spice cabinet. You know, if you have a little bit of zatar, you know, make a little zatar pita chip. That could be very delicious. If you have some spices, maybe some chili powder or something a little spicy, you could make a spicy pita chip. I think you could take it whatever direction your pantry inspires you to do. So, we’re just going to do a nice small dice on this cucumber here and combine it with our tomatoes. And this is another kind of part of the recipe that if you, you know, if you had cherry tomatoes, you could totally use those instead. Uh, you know, if you if you didn’t have a cucumber, maybe you could use whatever other vegetables that you’d like to have in your pantry, you could totally utilize for a dip like this. Can I tell you a fun pickling that I see in the chat? Please do. Uh Janet, she pickled oranges and I was very curious about it and so she she pickled it with white wine vinegar, water, cinnamon sticks, and cloves. Wow. Doesn’t that sound amazing? Fascinating. Um what was it used on? Was it for a dish? Was it for a salad? That’s a good question. That was going to be my next follow-up. So Janet, let us know what you use that on. Janet, super cool. I have done a lot of um salted citrus where you preserve it, but I’ve never done any any pickled citrus. Although salt preserving it is sort of pickling it um in a different way, but that sounds really cool. I’d love to know what dish that was used for. All right, we’ve got our salad kind of ready to go here. I’m going to take a nice big pinch of salt, add that in here, and then we’re going to do some lemon juice, a little bit of olive oil, and then we’ll just let that kind of sit and marinate here for the next 10 or so minutes as we finish up the rest of our prep for our seven layer dip. And this is the cucumbers and tomatoes, eating them like this in the summer is just such it’s makes such a simple and wonderful little marinated salad. But I could eat this on basically anything. piece of roasted fish into another salad if you wanted to alongside a piece of grilled chicken. I think it’s just a lovely thing to have around. Add some herbs in there from your garden. Uh and you can really make this make this sing. For now, we are just going to let this sit and marinate for a few minutes. But of course, I always like to taste just a little bit. Good crunchy cucumber. Really nice heirloom tomatoes. We’ll let that hang out off to the side. So, quick recap. Pita chips are working in the oven. Our vegetable components for our dip are done. We got our quick pickled shallot. We have that working right here. We have our lovely little salad that’s going to go in and on top of our seven layer dip. And now, let’s talk about making this hummus. So, chickpeas are nicely nicely warmed and hot here. And I’ve noticed that the rest of the skins have kind of fallen off. And I don’t need to remove all of those skins because when we put them in the food processor, they will puree and blend. But when they stay on the bean, sometimes it it does not let the bean puree fully. And so that’s why I like to use that baking soda. We’re going to go ahead and just drain this quickly. Give it a quick rinse just to cool the beans down a little bit. All right. Very nice. So, we can see here um if we take a look at our chickpeas that we’ve got those skins have definitely started to come off. Our chickpeas are nice and soft and we’re ready to make our hummus. So, I’m going to grab our little food processor and we’re going to start this process. So, first we’re going to go in with our chickpeas. Getting those into our food processor. And then we are going to take about three tablespoons of olive oil. Just go in there and drizzle the olive oil on top of our chickpeas. We can always add a little more at the end, but I want to uh wait and see the texture and the flavor before adding any more. Um next up, we’re going to add a little bit of uh lemon juice and garlic. And so something I really like to do when I’m making hummus or even a tahini sauce that has garlic in it is I will cut the garlic or mince it whether it’s a microplane or doing it by hand and then I like to soak it in the lemon juice for about 10 or 15 minutes. And what this does is helps uh take away some of that harshness of the raw garlic. Uh a lot of folks maybe don’t like to eat raw garlic. This way we kind of cure it almost like you would a ceviche by using citrus juice. Uh and so here we still have raw garlic but the color kind of changes. is it becomes almost a little bit more translucent when I put it in that lemon juice just for um you know 10 to 15 minutes. It really helps with the flavor. Uh and then also just kind of on the pallet not having you know raw garlic for those folks that might not enjoy that flavor. Next up time to work in our tahini. So for the hummus we’re going to be using the uh haresa mighty sesame tahini. And this is such an awesome container because what I do is just give it a good shake. I feel that all of it is kind of re-eulsified in there. No separation. And then I can squeeze in as much as I need to. Look how easy that is. It’s awesome. Remy, do you have any tahini at home that maybe is a little more challenging to use than something like this? Yes. So, we were talking about this earlier and I was looking at the bottle. I recall like in my kitchen, I have like a jar of tahini and then every time I want to use it, I have to get the knife out and I have to stab it a hundred times and just get it all kind of mixed and then I’m really frustrated. Yes. So seeing it in a squeeze bottle is like very exciting actually. Super convenient, really easy, and just so nice to have in the pantry versus versus a jar that’s all separated. So loving using the uh the haresa tahini right here in our hummus. So, we got our chickpeas, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and now we have our haresa tahini in there. Let’s go ahead and start blending this hummus. I have some water here that I’m going to kind of hold off. I’m going to see how much of it we need. But, we want to make sure our hummus is a really pleasant texture. If we have a hummus that’s too thick, it kind of feels a little pasty in your mouth. And so, we’re going to have we’re going to probably add a little bit of water. But first, I’d rather just start the blending and then we’ll get some of that water mixed into there. I’m going to turn this on. Might be a little bit loud. Here we go. So hummus is looking really good, but as I see kind of right away here and as you can see on the camera, we’ve got a pretty thick situation here. And so I want to thin this out with a bit of water. And so I’m just going to go in with maybe, you know, a two tablespoons of water to start. And we can always add a little bit more if we need it. We have that lemon juice in there. We have that olive oil in there that are also helping us kind of thin this out. But tahini actually acts as a thickener in this situation. And you have to add some water to kind of help thin it back out. And so it’s maybe a little opposite of what you might think, but when you mix tahini and a splash of water together, they actually thicken up. Uh, and so this way adding that water in there helps us get a really smooth hummus. So let’s take a look. Now this is looking much better, but I think it’s still just a little bit too thick for our liking. So, we’re going to go in with just a tiny bit more water. And then the next we’re going to taste it and see if we like the salt level. Uh, pita chips. Thank you. Oh, they’re looking amazing. Take a look at those pita chips. These are looking perfect. So, golden brown and delicious is what we’re always looking for with pita chips. Let’s pull that back just so you guys can see these. Take a look at that. Nice and crisp kind of all the way through. I love the way these are feeling. I’m going to set them aside to eat with our dip. Oh yeah. Getting ready for the party. This They look beautiful, right? They got that, you know, you can see those herbs on there. They smell amazing. Yeah, it smells really good. let them cool down before I taste them because sometimes if you taste them while they’re hot, they may still have like a little bit of softness to them, but as they kind of finish drying here and finish cooking, they will crisp up kind of perfectly. But I always check just to make sure, you know, when I break it, I hear that nice crack and crunch. I know that they’re crisped all the way through. Feeling really good about those. Going to finish blending our hummus. We just added in those last couple tablespoons of water and we’ll give it a taste and see how we feel. Making hummus definitely is something where you can try to follow a recipe exactly, but at the end of the day, you’re going to need to kind of adjust it by feel and by taste. And so depending on, you know, what kind of chickpeas you’re using, how much did you cook them, is there a lot of residual water still left inside that chickpea, um did you shake your tahini or not, uh there’s a lot of variables when it comes to hummus. And so I like to always have a few spoons nearby so we can taste as we’re going. Uh especially when you’re making something that you’re serving at a party or serving to others, taste all the way through the process. So tasting our pita chips, tasting our hummus, tasting our salad, making sure we like the way all the food tastes. This is one of the pleasures of cooking is getting to eat as you go and getting to taste as you go. So let’s try that hummus. That’s delicious. It’s great. However, I think it needs a pinch of salt and I want to do a little bit more lemon juice in there as well. So we’re going to go in with a little bit more salt. Tiny bit of olive oil. The olive oil really helps kind of round out the flavor here. Uh when you have that slight spice from the haresa tahini, olive oil is going to help kind of bring temper that spice down a little bit. When we have something that’s a little too spicy, adding a little more fat in there, in this case, some olive oil works super well. And then we’re going to use the other half of this small lemon because I want to pull the acidity up just a little bit on our hummus. So that feels good right there. We’ll do one more blend and then we should be ready to start building our dip. So, I try to use the highest speed available on your food processor. This will make it smoother, creamier, more delicious. And if you notice, the color here has kind of changed from when we started. When we first started doing this, it had a much darker color. And as you really emulsify and whip some air into this uh and get this all creamy, the color kind of lightens and changes a little bit. So, let’s do one more spoonful. I’m going to taste off the back of my spoon now. I love I love where that is. It has a really nice balance. The tahini is definitely the first flavor that I’m getting in my mouth. That kind of really nice nutty sesame flavor, followed by that beautiful layer of the olive oil, the lemon juice, the tiny bit of garlic kind of on the back end, uh, and just that little pinch of cumin that I put in there. So, I really like the way this is tasting. We’re going to go ahead and spread that on the bottom of our dish and start building our seven layer dip. So, I’m going to use a uh kind of a baking dish like this. I think it’s a really nice way to present this where you can spread everything out and really see everything in our seven layer dip. So, f thing that’s going to go first thing going down is going to be our hummus. And I want to make sure I get all of it. So, I’ll take my blade out first and I’ll actually just scrape that into the pan just to make sure we get all of that good hummus off of there. And then we can go ahead and scrape all of this into our serving dish. Look at that lovely texture on the hummus. So smooth, beautiful color. It does have a little bit of a darker color than our normal hummus because we’re using that haresa tahini today. Uh, and so for those who are not familiar, uh, haresa is a North African, uh, chili paste. And so it can be used in in many different ways, but I love the combination here into the tahini. I wouldn’t say it’s too spicy, but it brings a nice level of pins to the table here. And so I I think it’s kind of applicable for everyone to eat. Not too spicy at all. Just a really delicious flavored tahini that you can have in your pantry. So we’re going to go ahead and spread this kind of all over the bottom of our dish. and then talk about garnishing our seven layer dip. So, we have some fun and delicious items that we’re going to be adding in to our dip today. And we mentioned we’re really kind of leaning into this Mediterranean style seven layer dip. And so, that means we’re going to be using some beautiful colamada olives. We’ve just cut these in half. We’ve got some crumbled feta cheese right here. And then we’ve got our Greek yogurt. So, let’s start building this. I am going to do kind of a little little dollops here of this yogurt. And so this is just some some really lovely strained Greek yogurt. Uh you could use lob as well, which is an even thicker uh yogurt. And so this is really up to you if you wanted to doctor this up at all. For me, I’m just going to put a pinch of salt in here so that we have a nice seasoning kind of all the way through. So just a tiny bit of salt. And then I have a splash of olive oil left for my hummus making. So I’m just going to put that in there. And we’ll mix that all together just to season up our yogurt a little bit. Using yogurt in savory preparations is one of my favorite things to do. Whether it is uh making a yogurt sauce with some cucumbers and tomatoes that you could serve alongside a piece of protein or in a dip like this uh where you can make yogurt really kind of shine as this bright acidic element that you’re adding on uh to that really nice rich hummus. So, let’s take this Greek yogurt now and I’m going to do some dollops kind of all over the place here. And you could spread it all across or you can dollop it like I’m doing. Really up to you. I want to see that hummus. And so I don’t want to cover it fully, but I do want to get a good amount of my yogurt kind of all across all across this dip. Look at that. Looks awesome. Scrape the rest out. And that feels good. Next up, we’re going to do our vegetable component here. And so I am going to start with my tomato salad. And so we’ll take this and just start layering on top of our yogurt. And I’m being careful not to use too much of that liquid that’s at the bottom here. I made a little too much of this salad. Uh, and so I’ll save the rest for another application. But for this, we want to kind of just make this beautiful, colorful tomato salad shine all over the top of our dip. That looks awesome. That feels like enough. And we’ll uh save the rest for something else. Next, we’re going to go in with our pickled shallots. And so I’m going to use my hands for this one where I can just go in there, start kind of Getting these shallots all across our dip. That is gorgeous. And then now the fun part. Let’s go in with some feta cheese and some olives. This is your choice. As much cheese as you feel like you want. I’m going to do about a/2 cup of this feta cheese here on top of our beautiful dip. This is another one where you could utilize, you know, it doesn’t have to be just like a cow’s milk feta. You could use a sheep’s milk feta. Whatever. Whatever your favorite feta cheese is, I think would do really well here. Last but not least, let’s go in with our olives. Going to do just another about a half cup of these cut colomata olives. And we’ve got a stunner of a dish here. What a cool thing to bring to a party. It’s unique. It’s different. Everyone’s going to love it. This looks so good. Take a look at that. Beautiful. We love it. Now, my favorite part. Let’s eat it. take some pita chips and have a lovely little snack. So, pita chips, nice and crunchy. Going to go and get all the way to the bottom. Make sure I get some of that hummus. Make sure I get some of that yogurt. A little bit of olive. Let’s get in there for a bite. That is delicious. So much going on, yet everything balances so well together. One more bite. You’ve got the perfectly creamy hummus on the bottom here. That yogurt brings some really nice acidity to the table. Brightens things up. And then the crunch of those cucumbers, the sweetness of the tomatoes, the saltiness from the olives, and kind of the zing from the feta really set it off. This is an outstanding dip. Bring this to your next party. Impress your friends, impress your family. Really, really awesome. Super tasty. We’re going to set this aside and move on to our next dish, which is our lemon cake with that tahini frosting. Give me just about 30 seconds to clean up and reset, and we’ll be right back to it. Okay. Hey, can I ask you a question while you’re doing that? Absolutely. I can talk and clean. It’s the famous question. How much ahead can we make this dish? Awesome question. I think you can make the hummus a day ahead if you want to. You can make those pickled shallots a day ahead. You could crumble the feta ahead of time. And then I think assembling it more alammen as in kind of right before you get to the party would be the best option. But you can do all your knife work ahead of time. You can make that hummus. You can make those quick pickled shallots. So some of the prep work can be done and then it’s an easy build. That didn’t take me too long to build. So, same situation. Before you head out to the party, take the hummus, start to build it, and then wrap it in plastic and bring it with you. The reason I wouldn’t do this too far in advance is because we put salt on those tomatoes and cucumbers. What happens is it draws out this liquid. You don’t want to end up with a lot of pooling liquid on top of this. I think it presents better when it’s kind of this this nice dry looking um dip, more akin to a seven layer dip that you maybe have had before. And so I would just build it as close to serving as you can. Thanks, Chef. We’ll dig in more on that a little bit later cuz I am uh that’s delicious and I can’t wait to eat more. But we have to finish our cake. Yeah. Don’t go anywhere. We’ve got another recipe coming. We got a whole another recipe. You’re going to be the most popular person at this party. All right. So, let’s chat about our cake. So, today we are going to be making a lemon cake. And so, in the summertime, I love to have a dessert that is on the lighter side. We don’t want something too heavy. You know, I tend to save those those chocolatey desserts for the winter time. Although, tahini and chocolate go very very well together. Um, I’ve made a lovely tahini chocolate chip cake before. Uh, that has a tahini and espresso ginache in the middle. Woo! So good. So, tahini does have its place with chocolate. I will say that. Uh, but for today, I want to introduce you to um just a really nice lemon cake recipe. And then we’ll use that tahini in our frosting. So, when we’re working with lemon, I love to infuse both the uh the zest, so the peel, and then also our juice into this cake. So, we’re going to use a microplane here, which is just a zestester. And we have two lemons. We’re going to zest those into our sugar for this recipe. And what we’re doing here is expressing some of these oils that are on the lemon skin into our bowl as we zest this. And it obviously it smells amazing. Every time you zest a lemon, it just really fills the room with the aroma. Um, and sometimes when you’re doing this, you can actually see the oils of the lemon kind of coming off into the bowl. And so this sugar is really going to grab onto all that flavor. Uh, and we’ll massage this sugar with the lemon zest to really add kind of another layer of lemoniness and another layer of deliciousness. Now, there is a debate on how to best zest citrus and I have talked at length with some pastry chefs who they demand that you zest this direction, which means that you are just kind of slowly zesting the lemon so you don’t get any of the pith and you don’t get any bitterness. And so, I don’t know, does anyone have a favorite way of zesting? I’ve always been a zestester of this direction, but I’ve worked with some pastry chefs that are adamant about zesting this direction with the microplane on top of the fruit. So, let us know in the chat if you have a preferred way of zesting. Actually, Chef Bonnie taught us the other way. The other way. Yeah. So, there each their own. I I noticed that generally anyone that is pastry forward does it that way. Anyone that is on the savory side tends to, you know, if you have to do a lot of it, I find it to be a lot faster. But anyway, matter of preference. We’re going to keep our microplane around because we’re going to use this a little later to zest a little bit of lemon on top of the cake. So, we’ll set that aside. I’m going to take just a spoon here and I’m going to mix this sugar and lemon together until it almost has like a kind of like a sand texture. And so, what I mean by that is we have, you know, a little bit of moisture coming off of that peel of that zest. And we want to really mix that all into the sugar. And so now we’ve noticed that the texture of the sugar has totally changed. It’s much more of a it’s a little bit more wet, a little bit of a sandy texture. And when I smell it, oh my gosh, it is just all of that lovely lemon oil, all of that lovely lemon zest is really expressed now in this sugar. And this is going to provide us with just a lovely flavor of lemon all the way through our cake. So that’s step one. Next up, we want to get all of our uh uh dry ingredients into the bowl. And so that’s going to be our flour here. Just some allpurpose flour. And then we’ve got our baking powder, which is going to provide some lift here. Uh some baking soda, which is also going to provide some lift in the cake, but we’ll talk about that in just a second. Uh and then we are go we have a little bit of salt in there as well. Just a just a/ quart teaspoon of salt. Little pinch help balance everything out. Now that we have all our dry ingredients in the bowl, I’m going to grab my whisk and we’re just going to mix all that together before we add in our wet ingredients. So, for our wet ingredients today, we have some milk and then we have some oil. I really love to use oil in a cake, especially in the summertime if you’re going to eat something that’s at room temperature. I find that using oil in a cake versus butter tends to keep it more moist. And so, I love this combination here of half milk and half oil as our um as our wet component of the cake. We’re going to crack two eggs into this as well. And then we’re going to combine our wet ingredients into our dry ingredients. But I like to mix all my wets in a bowl first. So we’ve got our milk. We have our oil, two eggs. Now I got a teaspoon of vanilla extract. And then I have the juice of half a lemon or about, you know, a little bit of like a/4 cup of lemon juice. And I’m just going to combine all that here in my bowl. And then we are going to mix our wet ingredients into the dry. So let’s drop all that in there. And now with our whisk, we’re going to start getting that all together. So, at the same time here, we want to make sure that we have a loaf pan that is ready to go into the oven. And so, what I like to do is I will take a piece of parchment paper and I put it in the bottom of my loaf pan. And then, I give it a little spray just with some spray oil to make sure that this isn’t going to stick. And I like to leave the parchment hanging over the edge because it makes a really nice handle for when you want to take this cake out onto the cutting board to kind of finish glazing it and preparing it. And so I really like to utilize the parchment paper. And I don’t trim it too much. I like to leave it hanging over a little bit. You know, if you have inches on either side, maybe trim it down a little bit more. But I just took a little half uh sheet of parchment, trimmed it down a little bit so it fit inside of my loaf pan right here. And depending on your size of loaf pan, maybe you need, you know, a little bit bigger or smaller. Uh, so let’s take that whisk and let’s go and mix up our cake. Now, we don’t want to overm mix this, but we do want to make sure that we get any clumps of flour out. And so, I like to kind of hold my bowl and hold my whisk. I choke up on the whisk a little bit and give it a nice whisk and get this cake batter kind of all mixed together. And so, I’m smelling still that lemon zest. It smells amazing. And then I want to just make sure that I’m getting most of the lumps out of here. But we don’t want to overm mix this because if we mix the flour too much, we may start to develop gluten here. And if we develop too much gluten in our uh cake batter, it’s going to be a little bit chewy and a little bit tough. And we want it to be light and lovely and not chewy and dense. So, I feel good about this. It looks like I don’t have any lumps left anymore. The consistency of the batter is very similar to like a pancake batter, maybe just a little bit thinner. And it looks great. Ready to go. So, we’re going to scrape with a spatula into our prepared loaf pan here. Like to use a spatula for this because we can get all of the batter out. And just drop all that into our pan. Now, this cake bakes for about 45 minutes in a 350°ree oven. And it puffs up beautifully and gets a really nice golden brown color, especially around the edges where you’ve sprayed that parchment paper. Looks really good. Fills up about half of my loaf pan. And that’s perfect because it’s going to double in size as it bakes in the oven. Uh, and so one note is that if you’re using a loaf pan that may be a little bigger than this, you may only be baking for 30 or 35 minutes. So, I like to have a toothpick handy or a cake tester to poke into my cake. And if it’s coming out clean, we know that that cake is finished. And so, I’m going to put this in the oven. This is going to take about 45 minutes for me. But lucky for you, we made one ahead of time, so you don’t have to wait for this one to cook. So, let’s take a look at this beautiful little lemon cake right here. So, it is, you know, nearly doubled in size. We’ve got this beautiful kind of golden brown color. Let’s take it out of here and talk about the glazing process. Oo, look at that. Beautiful kind of nice golden brown all the way around. This is a gorgeous lemon loaf. Smells lovely. Lemon loaf is like truly one of my favorite things. I cannot wait to have this. So delicious. So good. I am. Yeah, I’m really excited about this. Next up, time to make our icing. Make our little tahini frosting here. So, for this process here, I want a small mixing bowl. Doesn’t need to be too large. And then we’re just working with some plain tahini. And so, this is, you know, classic spreadable, squeezable tahini from Mighty Sesame. Right out of the container, we’re going to go with about a half a cup of that. So easy. No mess. Look at this. Beautiful. All right, that feels like about a half a cup. We can always add a little more later if we feel like it needs it. Uh, and we’ll set that aside. Next up, we’re going to go with some powdered sugar. And so, if anyone’s ever made kind of a basic glaze for a cake before, uh, powdered sugar and lemon juice, a little bit of salt in there makes a really nice uh, glaze. But for today, this tahini is going to give really nice extra body to this and make a kind of unique icing that maybe you haven’t had before. and it’s really delicious and applicable for many many pastry applications. We’re going to go in with a little bit of vanilla extract. And then I have a couple uh tablespoons of butter here. Just room temperature softened butter. We’re going to add that in as well. Uh this could be subbed out for um for olive oil if you wanted to. You could do a um this could become a vegan preparation if you wanted to. Uh tahini works really well that way where you’re able to substitute for folks that might not be able to have dairy. Uh but for today, I’ll go in with the butter. pinch of salt. As always in pastries and desserts, a little bit of salt goes a long way. Helps balance things out and really just makes it super delicious. And then what I have on hand is a little bit of I have some whole milk here. And this is could be used could be water instead. I’m going to do just a splash to start because as you noticed earlier when I mixed up that tahini in the hummus, it kind of thickened right away. And so as we mix this, we may notice that it thickens up again. So, I’m going to take my little whisk and we’re just going to start mixing this whole beautiful situation together. And so, I am noticing that it is a little bit on the thick side. And so, I am just going to keep whisking until that butter gets fully mixed into there. You can soften that butter slightly in the microwave if you want to. Uh, that way you’re not dealing with any sort of chunks of butter. But a good vigorous whisking and all those butter gets kind of combined into our lovely glaze right here. I’m actually really enjoying the texture of it. So, I think we’re going to leave it there. This looks really good. And so, I did about a tablespoon of milk added in there as our uh just to help thin out that tahini just a tiny bit. This looks awesome. Look at that. Let’s have a taste. Oh, that is so delicious. We’ve got the sweetness from the powdered sugar. The vanilla brings a little bit of that vanilla flavor in the background. And then the tahini is Oh my gosh, that is so good. I am going to now we’re going to ice this little lemon loaf here. And then we’re going to finish it with a couple more fun ingredients. So, I’m going to take just a small spatula. You could use an offset spatula um if you wanted to, but I’m just going to start draping this kind of over our cake here. making sure I kind of get it in all these little nooks and crannies that are on the top of our cake. And then if we wanted to let this kind of sit and and harden and and become more of a glaze, we would wait about 45 minutes to an hour uh and then this would set up a little bit on our cake. But for today, I would like to eat this right now. So, we are going to go ahead and cut it in just a minute so I can have a a nice taste of this. If you have any leftover uh bit of the frosting, like I have a tiny bit left over here. I’m actually going to save it so we can drizzle it on each slice because that’s a really nice way to just get a little bit more of that flavor going on our cake. But before we finish, I’m going to garnish it with some toasted sesame seeds all over the top just like this. And then we’re going to do a little bit more lemon zest just to kind of reinforce doubling down on that lemon flavor if you will. So we saved our microplane. And we want to just do a little bit of lemon zest on top of that cake. And it is it is just beautiful. Smells amazing. Looks amazing. Can’t wait to dig in. Take a look at that. Beautiful. Now, my favorite part. Let’s have a taste. Can I ask you a question before you do that? Um, well, I don’t know if you know the answer, but how would you make this into like a muffin tin or something like that? Excellent. Does it convert the recipe much? Uh, no. So, you could actually do this exact same recipe. Um, and you would just prepare your cupcake trays as you would normally. Give them a nice spray and then take a big spoon and fill them halfway up. Your cook time will likely come down to about probably 15 minutes or 12 to 15 minutes uh until they double in size, get that nice golden brown look. And when you poke it with that cake tester, as long as it’s done, I think this would make a really nice a really nice cupcake. So, which someone suggested poppy seeds and I’m like, “Yum, then you’re going really for that lemon poppy seed or lemon pound cake flavor profile.” It would totally work. If you have them in the pantry, give it a try. Let us know how it is. Wow. This is This cake is It’s warm from coming out of the oven. It’s nice and moist. Just feeling the inside. It feels amazing. I’m going to cut myself a center slice. Do a little center cut right here. It’s really beautiful. And I’m going to do just a tiny little bit extra. of this tahini frosting, a little more sesame seeds, and then just a just a quick zest of lemon for myself. And so, if you were doing this on a platter, you could actually cut the whole cake and do this and present it like that and put a little bit of a uh, you know, like a pie server or a cake serving utensil underneath it and folks can serve themselves a piece because I think it’s really nice with just that that little bit of an addition of that whatever um, tahini frosting you have left over. Let’s give it a taste and see how we feel. That is awesome. That was a big bite. The cake is light. It’s fluffy. It’s delicious. That tahini frosting on there with the lemon together and those sesame seeds kind of reinforces that that sesame profile with using both the seeds and that tahini. And it’s a stunning recipe. This is this is delicious. This is a new take on maybe a cake that you’ve had before. You know, a lemon loaf or a lemon um lemon poppy seed cake even with that tahini on there. It really shines. It is delicious and it’s such a fun way to use tahini in a sweet application if you haven’t done that before at home. So, so good. One more little bite for me. Any last uh questions or comments in the chat, Remy? I don’t think so. And frankly, I’m ready to eat. Oh my gosh, that Yeah, I’m going to eat that entire slice and likely a lot more. Thank you so much for joining us today, everyone. Thank you to Mighty Sesame. And next time, join us uh next week, we are going to have three awesome chefs from South Carolina joining us on July 24th. Uh we’re going to be doing three classes. So join us live on July 24th. We’re going to put a link in the chat here um so you can bookmark that and save it. But we’d love to see you again. Find this class and all our classes on demand. Thank you so much and we’ll see you next time. [Music] [Music]