Making Cheese Stuffed Qatayef

The easiest thing to do as a Ramadan dessert is stuffed Qatayef. Every other co-op has a station producing the pancake like round qatayef dough and all you have to do is pick them up, take them home, stuff them then cook them.

This Ramadan I’ve been craving gatayef but the one place I ordered from had them stuffed with horrible cheese. I wondered how it would taste if its stuffed with Alban Dairy’s amazing Akawi cheese so I bought myself a box and planned to purchase the qatayef dough after I unsalted the cheese by drenching it in water for two days.

After the salt had left the cheese I bought 1/4 kilo of fresh bubbling hot qatayef dough from our co-op and brought them back home. I chopped the cheese and placed one tea spoonful of cheese on top of one qatayef dough round sheet.

Traditionally the qatayef dough would be folded to look like a half moon and the edges glued together by water but I didn’t do that. I saw another way of making it in a cookbook by Abeer Al-Rashid where she placed another sheet of qatayef dough on top of the one with the cheese.

Then using a cookie cutter you cut through both sheets which would seal them up nicely resulting in a round shaped qateefa. I didn’t have a cookie cutter so I used a glass to cut into the qatayef.

A cookie cutter would result in a cleaner edged qatayef but this was fine. I didn’t throw the edges, I cut them up and tossed them with cinnamon and icing sugar and baked them into cinnamon twirls, they were good.

1 entire box of Alban Dairy’s akawi cheese would need one kilo of qatayef dough to stuff. I stored the qatayef in the freezer inside a Tupperware box and whenever I craved any I’d just make some.

Later on that day during futoor I baked three qatayef to have with the tea. Traditionally qatayef are deep fried but I don’t deep fry anything in my kitchen so they were simply baked until golden brown.

Then I drenched the baked qatayef with my own homemade sugar syrup infused with saffron. Hmmmm.

Et Voila! They were ready to be devoured. Totally effort less and didn’t make much time or effort to prepare at all! They tasted amazing by the way, alban dairy’s cheese gave it a very nice posh upgrade, taste wise.

Mmm I’m craving some right now! So easy to make and even easier to eat. Have you seen anything easier? Just like making a toast and cheese sandwich!