What a delicious cake! The tahini didn't outshine the rest, as I've experienced with other desserts. I used dried apricots, walnuts and dark raisins. Didn't use cognac. My only complaint would be that the texture was a little funny – moist and crumbly at the same time – which made cutting a slice a very tricky task. I figured that could be due to the solid ingredients getting in the way of the knife, but the batter itself also did give up too easily. I had indeed noticed a weird behaviour of the batter when mixing tahini and sugar on the mixer, forming lots of lumps. Don't know if was because my sugar was cold. Delicious though!