Judges in dip end with dessert hummus

JORDAN MOSHE

Whether you prefer adding za’atar or sesame seeds, the fact remains that hummus is a savoury dish. Zehu! (That’s final!)

But, what would happen if we substituted the garlic, lemon, and olive oil with cinnamon, vanilla beans, and coconut oil?

Odd as this may sound, these variations are gaining popularity, giving rise to a dish some look at with horror and others with curiosity. It’s called dessert hummus. 

Not unlike the popular savoury Middle Eastern dip, dessert hummus is also made from chickpeas, but is essentially its sweet counterpart.

The idea, which was floating around on the internet for a few years, became reality in 2017. The founders of Delighted By Hummus, a niche dessert hummus brand operating in the United States, got a $600 000 (R8.6 million) investment on an episode of Shark Tank when it pitched the idea to the programme’s panel of investors.

According to New York-based online media outlet Insider, the founder of Delighted by Hummus, Makenzie Marzluff, was inspired to create dessert hummus on her way to a Super Bowl party.

“I wanted to bring a healthy cookie dough that could be eaten by the spoon,” Marzluff said. “I thought, ‘Why not put chickpeas in the blender, and see how it comes out?’ I added other cookie dough-like ingredients to the chickpeas, and it resulted in dessert hummus!”

Since the company’s inception, hummus in flavours including chocolate mint, brownie batter, and pumpkin pie have hit the shelves of American supermarkets. Some celebrate the creation of a virtually guilt-free, gluten free, and vegan friendly dessert. Others express outright horror at the very thought of combining the grainy texture of chickpeas with the cloying sweetness of chocolate in paste form served in a tub.

Dessert hummus taste test

Because dessert hummus has not yet reached our shores, the SA Jewish Report embarked on a mission to create and sample different variations of the dish to see whether the concept is a culinary crime or modern-day marvel.

Reaching out to a number of local kosher restaurants and caterers, we invited members of our community to try their hands at creating a dessert hummus dish of their own following a simple mandate: it had to be made of chickpeas, and it had to be sweet. 

And so, representatives from Feigels and Brioche, together with a panel of hand-picked judges, assembled at the SA Jewish Report’s offices for Johannesburg’s first dessert humus tasting.

Including Habonim Shaliach Danny Abebe, Israeli Deputy Ambassador Ayellet Black, and Instagram food blogger Steve Steinfeld, the judges were instructed to award a score out of 10 to each of the seven hummus variations presented, and declare one the winner. This would be done without knowing who had prepared the dish, based on the combination of flavours, the texture, and overall impression.

“I’ve been dreaming about this for a while now,” admitted Black as the dishes were set out before the judges. However, they all looked somewhat apprehensive at the thought of sampling hummus paired with chocolate, blueberry, granadilla, and other sweet flavours.

Served in the form of tartlets, the dishes from Brioche featured three variations of chocolate-based hummus, each paired with a different filling or topping, including peanut butter, citrus, honeycomb, and marshmallow. They included a brownie batter hummus tart with marshmallows and honeycomb; a Reese’s Pieces, peanut butter chocolate hummus tart topped with Ferrero Rocher and citrus infusion; and a chocolate orange hummus tart topped with candied orange zest.

Taking a different tack, Feigels presented its variations in traditional tub form, layering savoury hummus with different sweet toppings such as ginger, blueberry, butternut, pecan, and granadilla. These included Cinfull Butternut, a pecan topped dish which included pieces of sweet butternut; the Zesty Lemon, with added piquant ginger; Granadilla Thrilla; and The Berries.

Taking to their task with relish, the judges sampled each variation in turn. Although they frequently admitted to liking the dishes, they often remarked that they were more like a dessert than actual hummus. Biting into a tartlet, Abebe said, “I like it. It’s tasty, but where’s the hummus here?”

Steinfeld seemed to share the sentiment. “This is more dessert than hummus,” he said. “ I do like it, but I don’t really see how it can be considered hummus at all.” The others agreed, but their reservations certainly didn’t stop them from enjoying their sampling.

Steinfeld said that in spite of entering unknown territory, the two caterers had done a remarkably original and creative job. “The way they have approached the brief is certainly clever,” he said. “Their interpretations, though very different, combine flavours in unusual ways that are interesting and quite exciting. Pairing savoury with sweet and vegetables with dessert, there is certainly something to be said for creativity.”

He explained that the combination of vegetables with sweet desserts is particularly trendy in the culinary world at the moment, a fact which Black believes makes being a health-conscious mother a little easier. “As a mother, I know how difficult it is to give children something they will enjoy eating that’s also good for them in some way. This type of hummus — as perplexing as it is —would be very good for kids as a dessert option, as you can kind of trick them into eating a vegetable. I don’t know how no one has thought of doing this before.”

After some deliberation, the judges declared the citrus variation prepared by Brioche to be the winner. A close second was the cinnamon butternut dish prepared by Feigels, which in spite of resembling a type of hummus charosset or tzimmes, delighted the judges with its novelty.

“I don’t really like hummus myself, and had to find a way to make it different,” said Carla Erasmus of Brioche. “I wondered how I could make something different from something traditional, and ended up making a dessert by doing something weird. It was a lot of fun, and I got the chance to get creative with it.”

Tamar Dakes of Feigels felt the same. “I asked myself: what do you serve a sweet hummus with? How do you eat it? Dessert hummus is unlike anything else. We had to come up with a way to make sure that it was still hummus, but with a dessert twist. It was lots of fun to try make something different.”