Recipes

Think of a beautiful shortbread filled with grey dates & nuts. This is so easy to make and something unusual to ave as a afternoon tea. This goes really well with a mint or cardamon tea or arabic coffee. Try it with a few different filling, we love them both hot & cold. What will you eat yours with.

Arabic shortbread filled with Dates & Nuts - Ma’amoul

Arabic Shortbread filled with Dates & Nuts - Ma’amoul معمول‎ معمول‎

These are shortbread pastries traditionally filled with dates, pistachios, or walnuts (or occasionally almonds, figs or other fillings). They are popular in Palestine, Israel, Lebanon and other Levantine countries.

I made them using this recipe . I am hopeless in writing my own recipes myself. So I found this recipe which is very close to the ingredients and measurements I use. This website is great it has some amazing authentic recipes.

Total Time:45 Minutes

Prep Time:25 Minutes

Cook Time:20 Minutes

•2 cups all purpose flour

•1 cup semolina flour

•1 tsp baking powder

•¼ cup milk

•100g butter at room temperature

•1 tsp orange blossom water

•1 Maamoul Mold

Filling

•1 cup ground walnuts

•¼ cup sugar

•¼ tsp cinnamon

•1 tsp orange blossom water

•8 medjool dates, pitted

•1 tsp orange blossom water

•vegetable oil

•powdered sugar

DIRECTIONS

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, combine flour, semolina and baking powder, mix well.

Next, add butter, milk and orange blossom water to dry ingredients and combine until dough is formed.

In a food processor, blend walnuts until fine and crumbly, pour walnuts into bowl and add sugar, cinnamon and orange blossom water.

Next, put the dates into the food processor and blend until it is formed into a fine ball, remove and add orange blossom water, set aside.

To form maamoul cookies, roll dough into balls, smaller than golf balls, poke an indent into the ball and place some of the filling inside, close the opening until all of the filling is concealed.

Next, wipe down the maamoul mold with some vegetable oil so that dough does not stick, press ball into the maamoul mold and then tap our the cookie by hitting the mold on the side.

Place the cookies on a non-stick baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes, until bottom of the cookie is light brown. Remove cookies and let cool completely, dust cookies completely with powdered sugar and store in an air tight container for up to 2 weeks.