Nad's Treasured Recipes: Maamoul

Maamoul is Lebanese shortbread pastry filled with dates, walnuts, pistachios or almonds. Our Family Maamoul is stuffed with a mix of pistachio, walnuts and almonds all together! The taste is so distinctive! Also, instead of using the maamoul molds, mum used to make us all help out decorating the maamoul using special brass tweezers.

Ingredients:

Dough:

1kg fine Semolina

½ kg Butter melted
1/2 cup Flour

½ cup mixed Rose Water

½ cup Orange Blossom Water

1 tablespoon of dried Yeast (I used dried instant Yeast)

Nuts filling:

1 cup Pistachios

1 cup Walnuts

Maamoul molds (only had 2 designs out of 3)
& brass tweezers

1 cup Almonds

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoon Rose Water

3 tablespoon Orange Blossom Water

Dates Filling:

500g Dates

½ cup Butter

½ teaspoon Miskeh/ Mastic

Mix fine semolina, melted butter and yeast together. Add Rose water and Orange blossom water gradually to make a dough and knead for a minute or two to be sure the dough is well blended. Cover dough and let stand for at least one hour.

Ground together all the nuts. Mix together ground nuts, sugar, rose water and orange blossom water till the mixture is crumbling together. Set aside.
Mix together dates, butter and mistek so that that mixture is like dough. Set aside.
Now we have both fillings ready. You will have enough dough to use both of these fillings. Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 or 400F (200C).
Grease cookies sheet, or line with greaseproof paper.

Knead dough again briefly, and form into walnut sized balls. Make a hole in the centre using your finger.

Fill the hole with a teaspoon of the nut mixture (or dates mixture), and seal the dough up over the hole.

Gently form into balls. Place into the maamoul mold , press in gently; level it up with the mold. Turn it round and gently tap on the worktop & the maamoul will come out.