It's been a while since I've posted about a dessert for this project and I'm really excited about this one. Usually I will do a dessert along with a savory dish, but for Iraq I just did one sweet dish. I had already done most of the dishes commonly eaten in Iraq: falafel, kibbeh, maqluba, dolma, pretty much every type of rice dish you can think of. I had actually planned on making a type of pomegranate soup as well but I think I ended up without much time and not a lot of motivation to put in the effort to do two dishes. Plus these cookies, called kleicha, can hold their own!
The dough starts with flour and spices. There are various recipes and I'm sure every family has their own preference for the spices used; I ended up using cinnamon and cardamom. Once recipe I used called for maple syrup (it was supposed to be for a "healthier" version) but the more traditional one had no sweetener at all.
Once the spices were all mixed in, I added melted butter and a little bit of almond milk. One of the recipes I used called for yeast, and the picture definitely showed them as more of a puffier texture than most of the other pictures I saw online. It definitely seems like there's plenty of variation in how you can make these.
The dough created was a little tough but fairly moldable. I think if I made them again I would definitely make some adjustments so it's not quite as crumbly.
I rolled the dough between two pieces of parchment paper into a long rectangle.
And then I covered it in a layer of date paste. I didn't take pictures of the process for making the paste--I basically just cooked whole dates in a pot with butter and spices (cinnamon and cardamom as before). One extra ingredient I added per one of the recipes was a teaspoon of cocoa powder. I'm not sure if this really does much, maybe creates a deeper flavor.
Once the filling was spread, I rolled up my rectangle lengthwise to create a "jelly roll" type of shape. Then, I sprinkled it with sesame seeds and cut it into smaller pieces. My dough definitely cracked a bit as you can see, but I wasn't too worried about it. Using a bit more liquid probably would have helped.
I had to press down a bit on some of them to get the sesame seeds to stick. The dough itself wasn't soft or sticky so maybe rolling it out onto a layer of sesame seeds on the parchment paper would help give more of an even distribution.
These cookies smelled absolutely amazing in the oven. I love the smell and flavor of both cardamom and cinnamon, so these were a huge hit. I would definitely compare these to a Fig Newton, but with dates and a more crumbly texture. I will certainly be making these again, and maybe experiment with the yeasted dough for a lighter, fluffier cookie. I'm glad I didn't add any sweetener to the dough, I think the more bready-flavored dough paired with the sweet date filling was perfect.
Recipes Used: Nadia's Healthy Kitchen Kleicha // Iraqi Family Cookbook Kleicha
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