Today’s recipe is one of my favorite childhood recipes!
Its taste is nostalgic, it carries with it a lot of memories of the good all days, when my two brothers and I used to fight on who will help mum with preparing this dish!
Every single house in Lebanon and all the Middle Eastern and Arabic homes do this recipe. The occasion may vary from house to house and from religion to religion but we all do it and love it!
Qatayef is a recipe of mini pancake stuffed with Arabic cream (Ashta) or with nuts and all kind of goodies then usually fried.
It is prepared for Saint Barbara day in the Christians houses and for Ramadan seasons and Eftar in the Muslims houses, but like I mentioned it is a very important and is a primary dish at every Arabic table in those occasions!
If any Arab told you they don’t love “Qatayef” then there must be something wrong with them! Either he is not Arabic or seriously there is something wrong with him!
Now in our house, Saint Barbara day is a big deal! We spend weeks preparing for this day and this celebration.
“To give you a brief about the St. Barbara day and from where the tradition came. Barbara was the lonely girl of a pagan father. He cared about her a lot, and he was always afraid on her beauty, so he locked her up in a tower so no one can see her, and she began to meditate and think about those statues they worship, she met a Christian priest named Valentino who introduced the Christian religion to her and she became to understand and turned into a Christian and destroyed all the pagan statues in her father house. Her father was furious about her actions so he started to torture her and each time he did, her wounds used to be healed miraculously. So she run away from her father and started too disguised so no one recognize her and tell her father where she is. But a shepherds saw her and recognized her and told her father and she was captured and tortured so she converts back from Christianity but her beliefs got stronger and the wounds kept on healing, so the emperor got so mad and ordered her father to cut her head, and she was martyred in the 4th century. Since then they day of her martyr is celebrated on the 4th of December, by reviving the tradition of disguising and going to the houses of the town and sing the St. Barbara song and let the people of the house guess who we are, and they gave us candy, and fruits and sometimes some money.”
We used to think and prepare our outfits weeks before and compete on who is going to be the best one, we enjoy that day in our childhood.
Now we still do but only with the food part! 😛
We prepare the Qatayef, Maakroun and whole-wheat bowl and many other sweets differing from region to region.
Today, I am going to share with you a clean healthy version of Qatayef that is so good and full of flavor you won’t even notice that is lighter or healthier. You can enjoy this recipe for the St. Barbara day or for your Ramadan feasts or you can just enjoy it for any other normal day where you want to pamper yourself with a rich, delicious and refreshing breakfast or desert.
Now the qatayef making is divided in three parts: the batter, the filling and the sugar syrup.
For the batter it is the same for all the filling.
The filling have two part:
- The filling for the raw qatayef that is made with milk called “qachta” it is an Arabic version of cream
- And we have the filling for the fried qatayef that is made from nuts and some added flavors.
I am going to introduce to you the traditional filling and some new versions with my twist in it. And they are all amazing.
For the cooking process we are going to skip the deep frying part of course and switch to baking and trust me it taste amazing you won’t need the frying process. And I am going to substitute the sugar syrup with more natural clean source of sugar.
This recipe is so refreshing and full of flavors and it is healthy and clean so you can have it for breakfast or for a snacks. Even if for no occasion at all.
I am going to start with the batter:
the trick with the batter it is very similar to pancake but you have to cook it from one side only and keep the other side basically raw to it will be able to stick after putting the filling in.
QATAYEF BATTER (mini Arabic pancake) :
Serve 14 pieces
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 cup whole wheat flour,(sifted)
- ¼ cup semolina
- 1 ¼ cup of room temperature water
- ½ cup unsweetened almond milk *
- 1 Tbsp. honey *
- 2 tsp. Baking Powder
- 1 tsp. flower water
- 1 Tbsp. rose water
INSTRUCTIONS:
- In a deep mixing bowl, pour all the ingredients together and whisk it till it form a liquid batter.
- If the batter is too thick, add water till you have a thick liquid constancy.
- Cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel and put it in a warm place and let it rest for around 10 to 15 minutes till you see bubbles on the top.
- Preheat a non-stick pan greased with some olive or coconut oil. It is important to heat the pan very good before you start cooking the batter so it won’t stick.
- Once the pan is heated, now you can use egg maker round mold to do 4 at the same time or you can just go the old fashion way ….
- With a ¼ measuring cup, pour batter in the pan and don’t spread it to keep a small size, and let it cook till you see the all the bubble in top get dry and no more liquid in it .
- Remove and put on parchment paper not cooked face up and let it cool.
- Cook all the batter, the measuring cup will help you make them all with the same size.
- Set the cooked qatayef dough aside and prepare the fillings.
Notes: this batter is a vegetarian version so all my vegetarian friends can enjoy it. And you can substitute the honey with any vegan clean sweetener of your choice to make a vegan version of it that you can enjoy with the vegan fillings I will mention at the bottom.
For the almond milk you can use a sweetened version and omit the honey to make a vegan batter.
The flower and rose water is just for the flavor and to give that Middle Eastern touch for the dish but if you don’t want to add it won’t affect the end result as batter structure.
You can make the qatayef dough a day before, and store them after they get completely cold, the not cooked face fold on each other and stored in fridge in an air tight container box.
Now for the fillings:
I am going to share with you some vegetarian versions and some vegan version for the fillings that you can enjoy with family and friends, and all are so satisfying, nutritional and full of flavors.
QATAYEF VEGETARIAN CREAM FILLING (Arabic Ashta):
Enough for 7 qatayef filling
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 cup ricotta cheese
- 1 Tbsp. rose water
- 2 Tbsp. honey
- ¼ cup cold milk
- 2 Tbsp. corn flour
Additional add-ups:
- 4 Tbsp. chopped strawberries
- 4 Tbsp. chopped blueberries
- 4 Tbsp. chopped raw almonds
- 4 Tbsp. chopped raw pistachios
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Put the cottage cheese in a strainer for 30 minutes in fridge to drain well.
- In a small bowl. Put milk and corn flour and mix well till the corn flour is all dissolved in milk.
- Put on medium heat while keep on mixing until it get thickened.
- Remove from heat and add the drained cheese to it with the rose water and honey and mix it all till combined well.
- Set aside till it cool down.
- Use it for the filling and you can store it in the fridge for up to 4 days.
- To fill the qatayef, fold the dough in the middle, and close up the edges on each other all the way up to the center of the dough, don’t close it up completely so you can fill it with the Ashta.
- Fill it with 1 Tbsp. of Ashta and garnish with some date syrup or honey before serving.
NOTES:
You enjoy it with just the Ashta filling and some honey or date syrup on the top of it
Or you can mix and match with the additions
Version 01: mix Ashta with chopped strawberries and stuff the qatayef
Garnish with some strawberries and date syrup or honey before serving
Version 02: mix Ashta with chopped blueberries and stuff the qatayef
Garnish with some blueberries and date syrup or honey before serving
Version 03: mix Ashta with chopped pistachio and stuff the qatayef
Garnish with some pistachio and date syrup or honey before serving
Version 04: mix Ashta with chopped almonds and stuff the qatayef
Garnish with some almonds and date syrup or honey before serving
Those are some of the versions I made but you can mix and match with any kind of fruits or nuts you like, the options are unlimited here guys!
This filling is served raw with no need to cook after you fill!
QATAYEF VEGAN NUTS FILLING:
Enough for 7 qatayef filling
INGREDIENTS:
- 1 cup chopped raw walnuts
- 1 Tbsp. cinnamon
- 1 Tbsp. rose water
- 1 tsp. flower water
- 3 Tbsp. date syrup *
- 1 Tbsp. raisin
Additional add-ups:
- 4 Tbsp. chopped strawberries
- 4 Tbsp. chopped blueberries
- 4 Tbsp. chopped dry figs
- 4 Tbsp. chopped dry apricots
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Preheat oven on 180 C◦
- Mix all the ingredients in a bowl.
- Then divide the mixture into 5 smaller bowls
- In four of them add to each one , one of the additions(strawberries, blueberries, dry figs and dry apricots)
- Mix all well and fill the qatayef dough with it and close it completely
- Grease a pan and line up the qatayef than grease the top of qatayef also with some coconut oil.
- And bake for 10 minutes with the broiler on so they got crispy and a brownish golden color.
- Keep eye on them because it will easily get burned of you leave for extra minutes.
- Remove from oven drizzle with date syrup and some crushed nuts or some of the fillings to know what the filling of each one and enjoy.
Notes: if you are not strictly vegan or you are vegetarian you can switch from date syrup to honey but honestly I advise you to use date syrup to get that perfect Middle Eastern qatayef combo.
You can use any kind of vegan syrup if you can’t find the date syrup.
In the traditional recipe they use white sugar syrup, but I always like to use a natural source of sugar for my cooking, so I tried the honey and the date syrup for a 100% vegan recipe and it turned out to be even better than the sugar syrup. No one will notice the difference either in the syrup or in the whole Qatayef recipe.
for more St.barbara Day inspired recipes you can check this Maakroun cookie bites recipe