Have you ever tried it?

My husband has a friend a work who is originally from Lebanon. He went back home on vacations recently and came back to the US this week, bringing to my husband a tray full or mamouls.

Mamouls

When my husband brought it home he didn’t know the name of the thingy or what it was made of, so off I went to the internet to do my little research.

I went trough several pictures and sites of Arabic sweets until I found one site of a store that listed all the sweets they made and included a brief explanation for each. That’s how I figured the treat we got was a date-filled mamoul.

It is like a cookie with a filing. Pretty simple, very delicious. And, although it’s made out of dates and dates are extremely sweet, the mamouls are not so much. Yeah, sweet, but I can have 2 at a time without getting sick (i’m very sensitive to extremely sweet things and prefer not too sweet food – or too salty, but we’re talking sweets…)

It actually reminded me a bit of a cookie we used to eat as a child in Brazil called Goiabinha (or little guava). The idea was about the same, but Goiabinha had much less filling and the cookie wasn’t completely closed, so you could see the filing even without biting on it. Oh, and of course, the filling was not of dates, but guava.

Goiabinha

Goiabinha also looks a lot like the Fig Newtons, but again with guava instead of figs.

Fig Newtons

Anyway, back to the mamouls.

The tray was big. My husband, in spite of liking sweets and loving goiabinha, hasn’t even tried yet. I don’t know exactly why. All I know is that the cookies are going away. And guess who is responsible for this?

Yep. Mea culpa!

Oh boy, when I thought I’d be back into a healthy light, sugar free diet with the departure of family, here I am eating data mamouls like crazy….

Bad, bad me.