Simple Homemade Cookies

Simple Homemade Cookies

Mamoul are Middle Eastern cookies relatively easy to make at home. Traditionally, these cookies are often homemade during celebrations and gatherings in the Middle East.
There are two main types of Mamoul: those made from semolina dough and those made from flour dough. Both can be easily made at home. In general, they are more difficult and more time consuming to make than regular sugar cookies such as chocolate chip cookies, but can be easily homemade given a few instructions.
These days, it is extremely easy to make sugar cookies at home. You can just buy the readymade dough from any nearby supermarket, open the box, lay the dough down on a baking sheet, and put it in the oven. This is as easy as it gets. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Mamoul. These Middle Eastern confections are a little harder to make because you usually need to make the dough from scratch, prepare the filling paste, fill the dough with the desired filling, mold it, then bake it. It thus consists of relatively many more steps, but no special skills are required. Moreover, all the required ingredients can be found in any supermarket. Unfortunately you cannot just buy the dough readymade from a nearby supermarket and baked it. You will always need to prepare at home from scratch.
To make Mamoul at home, people can choose either the flour version or the semolina version. The semolina one is much more popular and most people prefer it of the flour based version. Some people choose the bake the flour type instead because multipurpose flour usually exists in most people's kitchens, and saves a trip to the supermarket to get the semolina.
The filling is another thing you will need to prepare at home, but it can be much easier than the dough. Most often, dates paste is readily available in supermarkets and thus it can be just bought and used. If you need to make pistachios or walnuts filled Mamoul, you usually need to prepare the filling from scratch, but this is relative easy step. The filling consists of crushed nuts mixed with sugar and sugar syrup. The only step that needs some work is the sugar syrup. It consists of large amounts of sugar dissolved in boiling water.
Baking Mamoul at home has been a long time tradition in the Middle East. On many occasions, people compete with each other over the best recipes. During holidays, it is a popular gift as well as dessert. It is often offered when people visit each other during these occasions. It can take a few hours to prepare a few dozen pieces at home, but it is totally worth it. Some people make it a cooking project with their kids because it involved a lot of manual work and get kids exposed to different types of food that can be made with dough. The most fun part for kids is the step where the cookie is molded to take a specific shape. Most kids like this step the most. Too bad it is one of the last steps, so they have to wait till the end to enjoy it. It can be molded in any desired shape. For kids, it can even be molded in the shape of animals to make it more fun and attractive, even though this technique is not used much.
In Middle Eastern and Arabic countries, Mamoul is available in most sweets shops and bakeries. It is very popular and is available abundantly in most countries.