Orange Blossom Water

Sweets, Fruits, Turkish coffee, Chocolate and other treats are served to guests at Eid. In Syria, traditional sweets are prepared such as Ma’moul, Ghraibeh, Karabeej, Barazeq, Baklava, and non traditional sweets like spritz cookies and others.

More pictures with details:

Above: Karabeej Halab with Natef.

Karabeej Halab means Karabeej Aleppo because karabeej originated in Aleppo. It is a type of ma’moul filled with pistachios or walnuts, and served with Natef (the white cream in the picture. The main ingredient in making Natef is Shersh Al-Halaweh “Bois de Panama”). You can buy karabeej or prepare it at home, but it is very difficult to make natef at home. We made karabeej at home and bought the natef.

I’ll post the recipe soon.

Above: Barazeq.

Barazeq is a type of sesame cookie originated in Damascus. You can buy it or make it at home. We made barazeq at home, baker’s ammonia is one of the most important ingredients in barazeq.

I’ll post the recipe soon.

Above: Baklava.

In Syria, Baklava is available in different shapes, sizes, fillings (pistachios, cashews, pine nuts, walnuts), but the real Syrian Baklava is made from:

1. Several layers of phyllo dough (About twenty phyllo sheets above the filling “the top layer” and twenty pyllo sheets below the filling “the bottom layer”).

2. The filling is walnuts mixed with sugar only. Don’t add spices, orange blossom water, rose water…etc to the filling.

3.The fat used is Syrian ghee.

4. Cut baklava into large diamond shaped pieces.

5. Drizzled with lot of sugar syrup (sugar syrup made from sugar, water, and few drops of lemon juice. Don’t add spices, orange blossom water, rose water, orange peel, lemon peel…etc to the syrup).

The baklava in the picture is not homemade, it is from sweet shop and it is the real Syrian baklava as I described.

Above: Different cookies.

I’ll post the recipes soon.

Above: Fruits.

Above: Chocolate.

The box is a famous Syrian wooden mosaic box, it comes as a set of three boxes (large, medium, small), you can find these boxes in different shapes like the octagonal as the one I have, or oval or square and others. I like to use it for chocolate, and it can be used for jewelery, or for decoration.

It is a tradition to bring the chocolate at the end when the guests want to leave. There are other choices such as chocolate and/or nougat and/or sugar coated almonds.

Note we didn’t forget the Turkish Coffee, it is a main part in all occasions including Eid, but no photo of it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 11:40 AM and is filed under Celebrations and Occasions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.