Halvah, Take #1 – Carmel Market, Tel Aviv, Israel

Halvah is any of various dense, sweet confections served across the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, the Caucasus, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Balkans, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Malta and the Jewish diaspora. In global, popular usage it means "desserts" or "sweet", and describes two types of desserts:
Flour-based: This type of halvah is slightly gelatinous and made from grain flour, typically semolina (suji- India). The primary ingredients are clarified butter (ghee), flour, and sugar.
Nut butter-based:This type of halvah is crumbly and usually made from tahini (sesame paste) or other nut butters, such as sunflower seed butter. The primary ingredients are nut butter and sugar.

Tahini halvah is very popular in Israel and among Jewish people all over the world. It usually comes in slabs or small packages, and is available in a wide variety of flavours, chocolate and vanilla being very common. The halvah is almost always parve (in other words, it contains no dairy product). Israeli halvah will usually not contain wheat flour or semolina, but will contain sesame tahini, glucose, sugar, vanilla and saponaria officinalis root extracts (soapwort), which are not usually found in other recipes. It is often served as a breakfast component at Israeli hotels, though it is not usually part of an Israeli breakfast, and it is even used in specialty ice-cream.