Ma'amoul - Stuffed date cookies

I've been eating these stuffed beauties for a long time now, not home made ones though.Recently I got anxious to make it at home.When i started searching the internet, i found innumerable recipes and with an array of interesting fillings.These are pretty popular in the Gulf.

Ma'amoul are small shortbread pastries filled with dates, pistachios, or other dried fruits.Read more about them here.

My DH acclaimed they were as good as the shop ones.I have generously followed the recipe from here

Here's how i made it.

For the Filling:

• Dates paste 2 tablespoons (pitted dates about 15 to 20)
• Sugar coated ginger candy 5 6 pieces ( or dry ginger powder 1/4 tsp) (optional) 
• Water 2 tablespoons
• Salt a pinch
• 
  
• For the Cookie Dough:

Flour  2 cups (= 1 cup wheat flour + 1 cup All purpose flour)

• Baking powder 1 tsp
• Confectioner's sugar 1 tablespoons + 2 tablespoons for dusting (powdered sugar)
• Salt a pinch 
• Butter 1/2 cup
• Vegetable oil 2 tablespoons
• Milk (boiled and cooled) 1/4 cup

To make the filling:

• Puree the dates and ginger candy with 2 tablespoons of water.Add a pinch of salt and blitz to a smooth paste.Leave it aside.

the beautiful filling...

To make the cookie dough:

• In a bowl, sift both the flours and add the salt,baking powder, butter and oil and mix well to a crumbly mix.Add the oil and bring knead well to bring into a nice smooth dough.
• Add the milk and make a smooth dough.
• Cover with cling film and refrigerate for an hour.
• Now divide into small lemon sized balls (makes about 20 cookies)

 To make the cookies :

• Preheat the oven at 250C.
• Take a ball of dough and roll into a circle the size of your palm(almost). Place about a teaspoon of the filling.
• Repeat above step for the rest of the dough.OR if like me make some plain short bread cookies in any shapes you like of the plain cookie dough too.And sprinkle with powdered sugar.

make them in any shape you want

• Place the cookies about a few cms apart from each other (they do expand a bit).
• Bake these cookies at 220C until the tops are whitish and the bottoms are lightly brown for about 22-25 minutes.

• Cool for 10 minutes and they are ready to go...beautiful Ma'amoul cookies!!

Tips:

• The original recipe doesn't call to refrigerate the cookie dough, but i refrigerated it for an hour because of some work i couldn't avoid, and realised it was much easier to handle the dough once cool.
• Don't get worked up(like me) on stuffing a huge lot into each cookie, the maximum you can place would be much less than a teaspoon.

Linking this to 


Bake fest @ Zesty Palette

Christmas Delicacy @ Erivum Puliyum

Winter carnival @ Tickling tastebuds

Global Food fest @ Sizzling tastebuds

Bake with your heart @ A girl's Diary


Thursday Potluck @Show and tell