Rebecca Freedner grew up in the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., area eating bulk halvah from a health-food store her family frequented. “I loved it,” she said of the rich, crumbly-textured, sesame-based sweet. Now 47 and living in Lincoln, Freedner has retained her love for halvah and appreciates that “it’s super-high in protein and good fats.”
But the most widely available U.S. brand of halvah contains ingredients that Freedner avoids, such as glucose syrup and palm oil. About four years ago, she was inspired to try making her own halvah with honey, a traditional sweetener. She didn’t love the results, so the 25-year Vermont resident turned to her “go-to sugar replacement” — maple syrup.
After much trial and error, Freedner’s efforts resulted in the summer launch of Holy Halvah, made simply with organic sesame tahini, certified organic syrup from Twin Maple SugarWorks in Lincoln, vanilla extract and salt. The extra-sweet twist? The brand was named by her chief tester and now partner.
Achieving the unique texture of halvah with a nontraditional sweetener was an exercise in alchemy. The confection is as much about mouthfeel as it is about flavor: It should break off in shards and start crumbly on the tongue before melting into nutty, crystalline morsels of slightly sticky sweetness. Holy Halvah nails it, delivering an unctuous richness that is not too sweet, with a perfect salt balance.
Freedner started building the business as a regular vendor at the Bristol Farmers Market and alternate at the Shelburne Farmers Market, offering 3.25-ounce bars for $6. As of October 1, she will move the operation into a commercial kitchen in Bristol, which will enable her to expand distribution to local stores.
According to the Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson, halvah (also halva and halwa) derives from the Arabic word for sweet, hulw, and goes back to seventh-century Arabia. It can refer to a wide range of sweets from the Middle East, Central Asia and India made from various ingredients. Many have a dense, paste-like consistency.
Davidson notes that Europeans and North Americans are most familiar with sesame halvah, made with the finely ground sesame seed butter or paste known as tahini combined with a sweetener. Over centuries and continents, halvah has been sweetened with sugar, date syrup, grape syrup and honey. Maple syrup — not so much.
Freedner had never cooked professionally. She makes her living as a psychic medium and has run a variety of businesses. “I’ve always been a side hustle/main hustle job lady,” she said.
The recipe development process was long and, occasionally, risky. Some versions, “You’d have to stab at it with a knife and chip bits off,” Freedner said. “My friends have almost broken their teeth.” She acknowledged that she could have taken better notes. “I’m not a scientist. It bores me,” she said.
Last September, Freedner moved to a new home in Lincoln and become friendly with her neighbor, Shaun Dedrickson, who had a lot of dietary restrictions. The ingredients of her halvah were among those he could eat. “I was bringing him all these samples,” Freedner said. “And I finally got this text that said, ‘Holy halvah, you’re amazing!'”
In the course of perfecting her product, “My relationship with my neighbor blossomed,” she said. The two are now a couple, and Dedrickson is her “main support” in the business, Freedner said.
“It was kind of inexplicable why I kept working on this,” she reflected. Perhaps it was a psychic’s instinct. In retrospect, her culinary endeavor has yielded a doubly sweet reward.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Maple Meets the Middle East | Lincoln entrepreneur develops Vermont-sweetened Holy Halvah”
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 5, 2023.
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