Knaafe is another traditional mid-eastern sweet, which is widely sold here, where ever you look. When Scott informed me with this event, making knaafe comes to my mind, the only thing challenging is that I have to add fruit, so to make the little twist on the original recipe, I used banana. Baked banana, pistachio, melted cheese and heavy syrup…. mmm… heavenly isn’t it?

Ingredients

  • Glucose syrup
  • 150 gr of shredded Fillo dough
  • 3 medium bananas
  • 1 stick of butter 
  • 250 gr Haloumi/ Ricotta cheese
  • 1/2 cup pistachios 
  • 1/2 cup powder sugar
  • 1 tsp orange  food colouring
  • 1 tsp  orange blossom water

Directions

  1. Melt butter in sauce pan in a low heat,  while melting add the shredded fillo dough gradually, when the dough absorb all the butter, remove from the heat and  divide the dough into two equal portions.
  2. Heat the oven, 200′ C
  3. Mix cheese , powder sugar, and orange blossom water in a blender.
  4. Arrange the banana on the pan, cover with the  1/2 prepared dough, lay the cheese patties on top of it.
  5. Mix the orange food colouring with the rest of the dough, and cover the cheese patties layer.
  6. Baked for 20 mins with bottom fire and another 20 mins with upper fire.
  7. Garnish with pistachio and pour the heavy syrup just before serving, best eaten while still warm.