Category Archives: Arabic pastries

Maamoul

Ma’amoul are the holiday cookie par excellence in this part of the world; every family has the designated maamoul maker and in mine we luckily had a grandmother who would make them and decorate them by hand.  I have already posted both recipes and a video-clip on how to make them. They are easy just time-consuming; [...]
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Mini-kadaifi cakes

If you walk into a pastry shop in Beirut (specializing in Arabic sweets), a good third of all pastries will be made with this dough, called kataifi or shredded phyllo dough. I saw  once  how this dough is made: A batter is piped through hundreds of minuscule little holes onto a hot griddle which forms [...]
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Almond Ma’moul and a giveaway!

With Easter approaching, I have been in a frenzy of ma’moul making, stuffing them with pistachios, dates and now almonds. However, unlike my grandmother who made them by hand all the way, I am using the food processor (kneading the dough takes less than 2 minutes) and the ma’moul molds. I am also giving away [...]
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Crown cookies (kaak bel-ajweh)

This is the other pastry that would make its appearance in our house for the Easter holiday,  kaak b’ootah (aka kaak bel-ajweh); this one was my favorite because of the sweet date filling. My grandmother would sit at the tiny kitchen table and would shape these by hand with brass clips. I would use tweezers [...]
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Pistachio ma’mouls

The ma’mouls were an Easter tradition in our house established by my grandmother who made them by hand from start to finish. No wooden ma’moul molds for her or  food processor. She used her fingers, knuckles and palms. To shape the cookies, she used malkat, those brass tweezers that I finally found in Beirut at [...]
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