I MADE PALESTINIAN MAAMOUL

and felt cute while doing it.

I’ve been really enjoying deep diving into and honoring Palestinian culture; as they have such a vast history and beautiful way of life. Educating myself on the occupation has been more than eye opening and as helpless as I feel about the atrocities, I feel more compelled to hold solidarity everyday, in some way. Holding space today for Palestinians was making Ma’amoul - a date filled sweet treat with a shortbread like cookie!

I am gluten free, so I had to find some substitutes and I didn’t have the ma’amoul decorative molds like this one here , so I just made them without it this time!
Maamoul in Arabic means “filled” and this treat actually originated in Ancient Egypt (called kahk), where they have found hieroglyphics depicting these in tombs and houses of worships!
Maamoul is an incredibly important part of the celebration of Eid al-Fitr and typically made a few days before and has been used to celebrate the end of the fasting period for centuries. I was also reading it is an important part of Easter for Christians in the Arab world. As I was reading in an NPR journal “Just as Easter follows Lent, Eid-al-Fitr is celebrated after Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.” As Palestinian-Jordanian food blogger Sawsan Abu Farha says “the cookies are meant to remind you that though fasting is hard, within it is a sweet reward, exactly like maamoul's outer shell is bland but the core is sweet.

The recipe I used to make it gluten free is THIS ONE and I will paste it below but I actually messed up the date filled flavoring by accidentally tripling the amount of cardamom ( I used whole pods woops!). It still turned out pretty dang good! What I loved is that it has a cookie like outside and then biting into the sweet caramel like filling felt like such a dynamic flavor balance. It would be so good with a cup of coffee, tea or tea milk honey steamer.

Ultimately, I was so pleased with this recipe! Next time I think I will make THIS version of Maamoul from Palestinian-Jordanian food blogger Sawsan Abu Farha. The cool thing about Maamoul is that there are so many ways to make it. I would love to test out the pistachio and orange blossom version!

Here is a quick video that no one asked for of me making the balls lol.

Here is a photo of Lucy and I waiting for my sweet treats to be out of the oven….

…and if you are still paying attention here is a hilarious photo set of me feeling myself in this outfit and then Lucy absolutely photobombing me and adorably ruining my sassy selfie…

LUCY LET ME LIVE!!!