The Best-Known Arabic Sweets and Where Each Comes From

Arabic sweets look alike to anyone from outside, but the differences between them are fine and real — and the same sweet can be made four different ways in four countries.

Knafeh: strands or fine

Knafeh pastry is made by pouring a liquid batter onto a hot rotating griddle, producing fine strands. There are two main versions:

• Coarse (hair): the strands as they are — the commonest in Egypt and the Levant, filled with nuts or clotted cream.
• Fine (chopped): the strands chopped into crumbs like breadcrumbs — this is Palestinian Nabulsi knafeh, filled with akkawi cheese.

And Nabulsi knafeh is distinguished by the orange-red colour laid in the base of the tray, and it is flipped after baking so the base becomes the top.

Baklava: Turkish or Levantine

Baklava is very thin pastry (filo) in ghee-brushed layers filled with nuts. The difference between versions:

• Turkish: usually pistachio, a lighter syrup, and more and thinner layers.
• Levantine: walnut or pistachio, a heavier syrup scented with orange blossom.
• Greek: walnut and cinnamon, sweetened with honey rather than sugar syrup.

Basbousa, harissa and namoura: the same sweet under different names

This is the clearest case of a difference in naming only: semolina, milk, ghee and syrup.

In Egypt it is basbousa, in the Levant harissa or namoura, and in parts of the Gulf basbousa as well. The differences are slight: the semolina-to-flour ratio, the presence or absence of coconut, and the type of syrup.

Qatayef: a thoroughly seasonal sweet

Qatayef are discs of batter cooked on one side only, so the upper surface stays porous — which is what lets it hold the filling.

It is tied to Ramadan across almost the entire Arab world, and is filled with clotted cream (and half closed) or nuts (fully closed and fried).

Maamoul: the sweet of the feasts

Maamoul are semolina discs filled with dates, walnuts or pistachios, shaped in carved wooden moulds. In the Levant each filling has a different mould shape so you can tell them apart from outside.

It is the feast sweet par excellence — Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha and Easter — made in large quantities in the days before the holiday.

Luqaimat, awameh and zalabya: fried balls in syrup

The same idea under three names: a loose yeasted batter fried as small balls and dipped in syrup.

• Luqaimat: the Gulf name, sometimes made with saffron and cardamom.
• Awameh: the Lebanese and Levantine name.
• Zalabya: the Egyptian and Maghrebi name.

The one practical difference: luqaimat are usually fried twice so they are crisper.

Umm Ali and aish el-saraya: bread desserts

Both are built on the same idea — stale bread turned into a dessert:

Umm Ali is Egyptian: puff pastry or broken bread with milk, clotted cream and nuts, baked in the oven.

Aish el-saraya is Levantine: toasted bread soaked in syrup, topped with a thick layer of clotted cream.

Muhallabia and qashtaliya: spoon desserts

Muhallabia is milk, starch and sugar, served cold with pistachios. It is the simplest Arabic dessert and the lowest in calories, and it is found from Morocco to the Gulf under similar names.

And qashtaliya is a richer Levantine version: the same principle but with clotted cream, ghee and syrup.

Lesser-known Gulf sweets worth trying

• Balaleet: sweet vermicelli with cardamom and saffron topped with an egg omelette — breakfast and dessert at once, Emirati and Qatari.
• Khanfaroosh: fried discs with cardamom, saffron and rose — an old Bahraini sweet.
• Sweet aseeda: toasted flour with date molasses and ghee, served at celebrations.
• Kleicha: Saudi discs filled with dates, cardamom and cinnamon, close to maamoul but with a different dough.
• Sago: a Kuwaiti dessert of sago starch with cardamom, saffron and nuts.

Distinctive Maghrebi sweets

Maghrebi cooking has an entirely different school of sweets from the Levant — less syrup and far more reliance on almond and honey:

• Kaab el-ghazal: thin pastry filled with almond paste and orange blossom, shaped as a crescent.
• Chebakia: plaited dough fried and dipped in honey and sesame — Morocco's foremost Ramadan sweet.
• Sweet briouat: pastry triangles filled with almond, fried and dipped in honey.
• Sellou (sfouf): toasted flour with almond, sesame and honey — unbaked, kneaded and eaten by the spoon.

Why most of them are made for occasions

There is a practical reason behind the link between Arabic sweets and feasts and Ramadan: most of them are expensive and laborious.

Nuts were — and still are — the most expensive thing in the kitchen, and ghee likewise. And the making itself takes hours: rolling baklava pastry, shaping maamoul disc by disc, folding qatayef one at a time.

Which is why these sweets became a collective effort — the women of the family gathering in the days before the feast to make large quantities at once. That custom still survives in many households today.

The rule that governs syrup

Syrup is the common denominator across most of these sweets, and one rule governs it:

One hot and the other cold. The sweet hot and the syrup cold, or the reverse — but never both at the same temperature. If both are hot the sweet soaks through and softens; if both are cold the syrup will not penetrate.

And a spoonful of lemon juice in the syrup stops it crystallising back into sugar.