Shared by Sylvia Fallas
Shared by Sylvia Fallas
Adjwe (Date-filled Semolina Cookies)
Yield: 32 cookies
Adjwe (Date-filled Semolina Cookies)
Yield: 32 cookiesFamily Journey
Aleppo, SyriaIsrael
Brooklyn
In Sylvia Fallas’s family, Friday afternoons are for coffee and cake at her maternal grandmother Renee’s house. Before Shabbat, everyone gathers for sweet treats, including these dainty date adjwe cookies. Made with a semolina dough and filled with a caramel-like mixture of dates, the adjwe are rolled out thinly and shaped into crescents. Achieving “a thinner dough is a sign of skill,” Sylvia says. Since the cookies are labor intensive, Sylvia makes several batches of adjwe at a time, freezing the shaped, unbaked cookies on cookie sheets and transferring them to ziploc bags when they’re frozen solid. You can bake the cookies directly from the freezer, adding an extra minute or two to the bake time. “It also helps the cookie retain its crescent shape,” explains Sylvia.
Read more of Sylvia Fallas’s story in “For This Syrian Family, Friday Afternoon Means Coffee and Pastries” and get family recipes for apple crumble and kibbe cherries (Syrian meat and rice roll with cherries and tamarind).
Ingredients
For the date filling:
½ lb. Medjool dates, pitted
For the dough:
- ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter or margarine, cubed
- 1 ¾ cups (200-210g) all-purpose flour
- 1 cup fine semolina flour
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- ½-¾ cup warm water
Preparation
Step 1
Place the dates in a small saucepan and cover with 1” of room temp water. Bring to a simmer and cook, mashing every so often with a wooden spoon. The dates should soften as the water evaporates. After 10-15 minutes, the mixture will turn thick and paste-like.
Step 2
If the pot dries out before the dates are soft, add spoonfuls of water so the dates don’t stick and burn. The mixture is ready when soft and spreadable and no water remains. Set aside to cool.
Step 3
Make the dough: Add the butter, flours, and salt to a bowl. With clean fingers, rub the butter until the dough is the size of pebbles. Slowly drizzle in the oil and ½ cup of the water and work into a dough. The dough should be smooth and soft, almost like playdough. If more water is needed, add up to ¼ cup of water to the dough, 1 tablespoon at a time. Divide the dough in half.
Step 4
Lightly flour a surface and roll out half the dough into a large circle, around ⅛” thick. Use a 3” round cookie cutter to cut circles of dough. Remove excess dough from around the cut out circles and set aside for re-rolling.
Step 5
Add ½ teaspoon of filling to each cookie, slightly off center. Roll the cookie into a tube shape (almost like a cannoli) with the seam side facing down.
Step 6
Shape into a crescent and place on a baking paper lined cookie sheet. Repeat with remaining dough and filling until you have used it all up. Freeze the shaped cookies until frozen solid, 1 hour.
Step 7
To bake, preheat the oven to 350F. Bake the cookies on a baking paper lined cookie sheet for 15-20 minutes, until very lightly browned. Cool the cookies on a cooling rack and dust with powdered sugar.
