Gluten-Free Maamoul – Lebanese Easter Pastries

by Fouad Kassab

As Easter approaches, one great way for me to connect with my memories of growing up in Lebanon is to make our traditional Easter sweets, maamoul. I remember being in the living room as a child, with my mum and four or five of her friends, making huge quantities of this delicious shortbread. This community of women would get together to collaborate on this mammoth project, entertain each other through hours of baking, and to supply their individual households with kilos and kilos of this highly sought-after delicacy. The ladies would have each prepared their pastry and fillings the night before at home. This is the easy part: the pastry is semolina kneaded with butter and scented with rosewater, and, sometimes orange blossom water. The fillings could be dates mixed with butter, or a variety of nuts – pistachios, almonds or walnuts – mixed with sugar and rosewater. The labour-intensive part is making the individual pastries. Though not particularly back breaking work, filling the pastry with dates or nuts, placing them in the specially designed maamoul moulds (different designs for different fillings) and then knocking the mould on a wooden board and filling up over a hundred trays requires patience and company.

We had a round, flat portable oven that we used especially for these occasions and though the smell of freshly baked maamoul would be intoxicatingly beautiful and almost impossible to resist, we would have to wait until Easter day before we got a chance to try any. Lent is a period of contemplation and prayer, and sweet delights such as maamoul were not to be consumed. Can you imagine how much discipline and parental pressure it took for us kids to not steal some when the parents weren’t looking?

I miss these communal gatherings I experienced as a child. The coming together of neighbours and friends to keep each other entertained and motivated is a beautiful thing to take part of, and life in Australia seems too busy for such an event to occur. And since I quit eating gluten, I also miss maamoul. This year, however, I took it upon myself to make the impossible possible. The challenge was, could I create a gluten-free maamoul that was as good as the real deal? Inspired by my macadamia and currant shortbreads which I included in our cookbook, Life-Changing Food, I have created this recipe for gluten-free/grain-free maamoul. The result, I promise you, is as good if not better than the originals. And if you don’t believe me, bake a batch and see for yourself. The only thing is, do you have the self-control to wait until after Easter to dig in?