This was a candidate for my birthday baking extravaganza. In a stunning lack of insight into my own mental processes, I am unsure whether the fact that I made it in March indicates that a) I was so excited about it that I could not wait another month or b) it became clear that this was to be a mere runner-up, and not the main deal.
In case you're curious, this was the state of the birthday idea board up until now:
I need help. Possibly clinically, but also more generally in making up my mind. The clock's a-ticking. Bear in mind that I have a 6" birthday layer cake all nicely vacuum sealed and frozen, ready to be assembled: a parnsnip variant of Nik Sharma's deliciously spiced cake and both French and Swiss maple buttercreams, including a some with chopped up bacon. Do you know of anyone else who has an emergency cake stashed away for their own birthday? I didn't think so.
So, what should I make anyway? But we were talking about mafroukeh, not my birthday neurosis. I stumbled upon this Lebanese semolina sweet recipe no doubt while trolling the web for pistachio things (or maybe semolina treats, that's been a recurring theme these days). I was in love, but I knew some R&D would need to go into this one. Mafroukeh and several of its Middle Eastern cousins are traditionally filled with some form of dairy - a clotted cream, a light soft cheese (ricotta, farmer's cheese) or a milk-based thick custard. I knew I needed something stiff and fairly dry that would be amenable to being shaped into balls in stuffed inside sticky semolina dough. Except I had no idea what that might be. See, firm tofu and just a few other ingredients can be turned into a decent ricotta filling for veggie lasagna or pasta shells, but on its own it is way too beany for a sweet application. Raw cashews, soaked and blended with as little water as possible, are somewhat grainy and not very firm. I had just made my first almond milk (better late than never) and the leftover almond pulp was like the world's driest ricotta. Hmmm. The plot thickens.
Based off of Kindness Kitchen's almond-tofu and The Yummy Kind's almond-cashew ricotta recipes, I make two batches of ricotta side by side. In an application where it will remain uncooked, the almond-cashew version wins by a landslide. In a cooked application, such as chocolate-ravioli-you-will-never-see-because-they-were-fugly, the tofu version had an edge. Cooked, it was moist, smooth, and far less beany than you would expect.
I picked the cashew enhanced variant for my mafroukeh. You can see how dry and stiff it was by my crumbly flowers (piped on). Next time, I'll add some almond milk before tossing some into a piping bag for garnish. The yellow "pollen" is pistachio flour.
Sweet Almond Ricotta Filling, Two Ways (A: Best Raw, B: Best Cooked)
Makes 1.5-2 cups filling (enough for one recipe's worth of mafroukeh!)
1 c loosely packed almond pulp, squeezed very dry (195g, yield from 1 cup milked almonds, skinned) Option A) 1/2 cup raw cashews, soaked in warm water and drained (121g after soaking) + 50 ml water
Option B) 4 oz extra firm tofu, pressed (113g) 2.5 tablespoons coconut oil, melted and cooled slightly (30g) 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/2 to 1 teaspoon lactic acid powder (taste as you go, or sub 1 tablespoon lemon juice) 2-4 tablespoons powdered sugar (15-30g) optional flavorings: 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, 1/2 grated tonka bean, or 2g mastic beads ground in sugar (to taste)
(Unless you have an awesome food processor, you may wish to blend the cashews and water separately first for Option A).
Combine everything in the food processor, tasting between each incremental addition of acid and sugar until desired taste balance is achieved. The coconut oil will help this thicken in the refrigerator.
Prepared as per the above, the mixture is fairly dense and dry, and will hold its shape when rolled into balls. To serve this like a more traditional ricotta, for instance with fresh or poached fruit, moisten with a splash (or more) milk and fluff with a fork: you should be able to get a much lighter, airier texture. The lighter ricotta in the foreground is Option A) as-is, whereas the one in the background had been doctored with vanilla extract (cheap stuff with caramel color), extra sugar, and tonka bean in preparation for a quick snack.
As far as the mafroukeh themselves, please refer to the originally linked recipe. You may also like this blogger's version of it, which has more detailed step-by-step photos of the process. (I suppose I could have done that, too. Dear 3.5 readers of this blog, would you like more process photos?)
Aside from the substantial change in filling, my other edits were fairly minor:
Pistachios: About half and half fresh pistachios, soaked and peeled by hand, and pistachio flour/meal, because I only had about 125g of fresh pistachios left... out of a 2-pound bag. Don't judge. I don't see this as having any impact on the final product, aside from a more golden, rather than green, hue and a slightly lower oil content. The dough came together quite well regardless.
Semolina: I toasted the semolina dry, which is more common that frying it up with a small amount of fat as in the original recipe. I wondered if this could be accomplished in the oven, and stumbled upon this video by Show Me The Curry: you can do it much quicker in the microwave. My microwave is a powerful bastard, though, and I nearly scorched my semolina on the first 2-minute increment - 1-minute increments are probably safer if you have a recent model.
Fat: Having toasted the semolina dry, I simply added the fat to the sugar syrup immediately before adding the semolina
Flavorings: I only used about 1/2 tablespoon of each rose water and orange blossom water, and it was perfect. While I love these flavors, I am too enamored with pistachio to let them steal the show. The amount I used was perfect to enhance the pistachio flavor without either flower having an identity of its own in the final product. Scale up to 1 tablespoon each if you want a more distinctive floral presence, but I can't imagine the full amount (1.5 tbsp each) wouldn't be soapy and aggressively floral. Then again, my blossom waters have been around a while and may have evaporated somewhat. (Also, call me Westernized, but I had to add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract as well.)
Molds: I used silicone molds, specifically these and these (links provided for scale purposes only; I'm not an Amazon associate). If you plan on doing the same, as opposed to ceramic or metal molds/bowls, skip the plastic foil step. Seriously, lining soft breast-shaped molds with a greasy plastic membrane is the stuff of nightmares. Simply lube up your molds with a bit of shortening and you will have no problem releasing the semolina dough. I tried both methods (read: ran out of patience with the plastic foil) and you can see the creases on some of my mafroukeh.
You may notice that the recipe calls for twice the amount of "raw" semolina dough (semolina and sugar syrup, without the nuts and blossom waters). What is a person to do with the leftover semolina? Well, I ground a handful of slivered almonds into the dough, tossed in some blossom water into it. Then, I processed some dried apricots and dates until I had a fairly dry but cohesive paste. I shaped said fruit paste into small log, rolled it into a flattened sheet of almond-semolina dough, and rolled the final product in some pistachio meal for a convincing but completely made up Middle Eastern confection. That I sort of ate while I was making the mafroukeh, so you'll never see how pretty it was. Sorry kids.