Ma'amoul

As tradition built it

Makes about 35 of each filling. Start the day before: the dough rests 24 hours, then stands 2 hours, followed by an afternoon of shaping and 25 minutes in the oven.

Ingredients

The dough, for five fillings

• 500g unsalted butter, slightly softened and cubed
• 120g icing sugar
• 800g plain flour
• 200g fine semolina
• 40g milk powder
• 7 tsp orange blossom water
• 3 tsp rose water
• a little plain flour, to dust the mould

The date paste and filling

• 500g pitted dates, for the paste
• 25g unsalted butter, for the paste
• 200g date paste from the batch above, rolled into 5g balls, for one fifth of the dough

The sugar syrup, for the nut fillings

• 1 cup sugar
• ½ cup water
• ½ tsp lemon juice

The walnut filling

• 150g walnuts, chopped small
• 2 tbsp icing sugar
• 2 tbsp sugar syrup
• 2 tbsp orange blossom water
• ¾ tsp ground cinnamon

The pistachio filling

• 150g pistachios, chopped small
• 2 tbsp icing sugar
• 2 tbsp sugar syrup
• 2 tbsp orange blossom water

To finish

• for garnish icing sugar, over the walnut and pistachio ones only

Method

1. The day before, make the dough. Beat the icing sugar into the softened butter, then work in the flour, semolina, milk powder, orange blossom water and rose water and knead by hand until it comes together smooth. Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours.
2. For the date paste, if the dates still have their stones, open them and take the stones out, then work them with the butter until smooth. Keep 200g of it for the maamoul and roll it into balls of 5g each.
3. Boil the sugar, water and lemon juice 5 to 7 minutes for the syrup and let it cool. Mix the walnuts with their icing sugar, syrup, orange blossom water and cinnamon; mix the pistachios the same way without the cinnamon.
4. Next day, let the dough stand 2 hours at room temperature. Divide it into five parts of about 340g, one for each filling. This page gives three fillings, so use three parts and keep the other two for the fillings named in the note. Roll each part into balls of 10g, kept under cling film so they do not dry.
5. Flatten a ball in your palm, set a date ball inside, or half a heaped teaspoon of nut filling, and close the dough round it. Press it into the carved mould, the round one for dates, the longer one for pistachio, and tap the mould on the bench so the cake drops out. Flour the mould if they stick.
6. Set them on an ungreased tray. Bake at 150°C for about 25 minutes, with heat above and below if your oven allows, until light gold top and bottom. Stand 5 minutes, then cool on a rack.
7. Dust the walnut and pistachio ones with icing sugar to serve, never the date ones. Keep them in a sealed tin at room temperature.

Notes

The recipe is Dimah's family one, from her Syrian blog Orange Blossom Water, a butter and flour dough for five fillings; she also fills them with orange peel paste and with ackawi cheese, served hot. The other Syrian dough is semolina and ghee, with mahlab and mastic.

What a modern chef changes

The mould tradition itself kept, not replaced with a shortcut

No numbered rung; a technique-provenance note in its own right

Method

1. Use a real carved wooden mould rather than a plain hand-shaped disc where one can be sourced, since the pattern is not decorative alone, it is what marks the filling type at a glance across a large festive batch, a genuine piece of functional design worth keeping.
2. Rest the dough as the tradition does, 24 hours chilled and 2 hours at room temperature: a rushed, unrested dough will crack in the mould.
3. Make this one as a group, the way the tradition does, since the labour genuinely divides well across several pairs of hands, rolling, filling, moulding, and the finished quantity rewards it.