I was invited 20 years ago to my one of my best Egyptian friend’s birthday. Her mom, May Allah bless her soul, used to make for her birthday every year the trifle. It is originally English and it is layers of sponge fingers or cake, custard, jam and fruits. In Egypt, we do not use…
Tag: desserts
Egyptian Eid butter cookies “El ghorayeba”
That would be a special night, the last night in Ramadan when every mom starts to prepare the dough for different types of cookies and put them in so many dark trays. Many years ago, we used to walk to the bakery “el forn” to bake the cookies for us since the trays were huge…
Kunafa with mahlabiya and pineapple
Kunafa is one of the very famous traditional middle eastern desserts. Kunafa is very long thin pastry kind of looking like soft and very thin angel hair pasta. Something has been going on with kunafa lately, for some reason there is a trend to fill it with tons of different flavors and options. Long time ago the…
Middle eastern donuts: zalabia
Zalabya or Loqmet el qady is the middle eastern version of donuts. They are crunchy from outside though and covered with powdered sugar or more traditionally a sugar syrup. The best you can ever eat is in Alexandria, Egypt. They are all shaped like perfect sized small balls as in donuts holes. Unless you make…
Om Ali recipe…The Egyptian bread pudding
Om Ali “Ali’s mother” is an Egyptian dessert that could remind you kind of bread pudding if you have never tasted it before. It is usually served in small clay baking dish as individual portions. Om Ali dessert came from a long amazing and bit dark history mixed with the Egyptian folklore. For sure, it has…
Egyptian basboosa: my favorite dessert!
Basboosa is my favorite dessert since I was a little kid. If you have never tried it before, it might be close in description to a very thin crumbly cake covered with a lot of syrup. So it is moist, sweet and dissolves in your mouth. It is GOOD! In Egypt, almost every bakery…
Mahalabiya the very easy and yummy Egyptian milk custard
Mahalabiya is one of the traditional Egyptian desserts. However, I do not believe it has the same popularity as the rice pudding does. I remember the first time I tried it was at a seafood place!! They brought a small bowl made of clay filled with mihalabeya after a huge seafood meal and it was on the…
The secret of crispy qatayef
Qatayef is the most traditional Ramadan dessert. I do not recall eating it except during the fasting month of Ramadan but at that time, I would like to eat it every single night after Iftar. In middle east countries, you can get the qatayef dough from the bakery, fresh and ready made to be stuffed right…
Egyptian sugar syrup: El sharbat el masry
There is no traditional middle eastern dessert that can be made without that yummy sugar syrup. This recipe below is the pure Egyptian way of making it. However, if you visit the neighboring countries like Syria, Palestine and many others, the flavor is different. Sometimes they add what is known as rose water. The Egyptians…
Twisted Cinnabon with dates and cinnamon
In middle east, pastries with date filling are very common. It could be in form of cookies, pastries or bread rolls. It is really tasty and common in all Arab countries. In Egypt, it is usually in a form of bread roll but in other countries it is more common as in cookies form that is…
