What is Tamara Ghraybeh?

Key Ingredients for Middle Eastern Date Cookies

• All-Purpose Flour: For the most accurate texture, weigh the flour using a kitchen scale rather than measuring it by volume with cups.
• Good-Quality Ghee: An essential ingredient in Middle Eastern sweets, ghee is prized for its rich, nutty flavor. It adds incredible depth to the shortbread dough.
• Powdered Sugar (Icing Sugar): Sift it before using to remove any lumps and ensure the dough stays exceptionally light and fluffy.
• Soft Dates: Use a fleshy, naturally sweet variety such as Medjool, Khudri, or Omani dates.
• Orange Blossom Water: A classic floral aroma that enhances and deepens the flavor of the date stuffing.
• Mastic Gum (Optional): Adds a subtle, traditional aromatic note that pairs beautifully with dates.
• Raw Shelled Pistachios: Use fresh, unsalted, raw shelled pistachios for the perfect color and crunchy texture contrast.

Pro-Tips for Baking Perfect Ghraybeh

• • Source the Best Ghee: The secret to a highly flavorful ghraybeh cookie is high-quality ghee. Use it at room temperature (solid but soft), never melted.
  • Chill the Dough: Mix the ghee and powdered sugar first, then gradually add the flour until a cohesive dough forms. Chill the wrapped dough in the refrigerator for 20 minutes before shaping to prevent the cookies from spreading in the oven.
  • Egg-Free & Leavening-Free: Like authentic plain ghraybeh, this recipe contains no eggs or baking powder, making it an excellent option for those with egg allergies. Keep Them Snow White: Watch your oven closely. To ensure they are fully baked while remaining perfectly white, bake them at a low temperature of 300°F / 150°C for 20–22 minutes.

  • Let Them Cool Completely: These cookies will be very soft right out of the oven. Do not touch or move them until they cool completely on the baking parchment, or they will break.

Can I Use Butter Instead of Ghee?

Ghee and Middle Eastern desserts are a match made in food heaven. Since ghee has little to no water content, unlike regular butter, it produces a smoother, denser, melt-in-your-mouth ghraybeh. For this reason, I don’t recommend using regular butter when making tamara or any other version of ghraybeh.

The best substitute for ghee is clarified butter. Here, I explain how to clarify butter.

“Tamara Ghraybeh” cookies are a bit of a project to make, but they’re well worth the time and effort. Assembly takes the most time, although it’s easy if you divide the work among several sets of hands.

How to Serve Tamara Ghraybeh?

For almost 20 years, I’ve been making platters of tamara, sanioura, plain ghraybeh, almond-paste-stuffed cookies, and maamoul for friends and family during the holidays and on special occasions—and I can honestly say they’ve always been the talk of the town!

Date Maamoul: They’re one of my favorite things to bake, eat, and gift! If you’re looking for a lovely addition to your cookie collection, look no further.

Plain Ghraybeh: With such humble ingredients, you’ll end up with one of the most gratifying cookies in the Middle East—perfect to enjoy with your morning coffee or afternoon tea.

Pistachio Maamoul: A semolina shortbread cookie from Lebanon and the Middle East, made with clarified butter, orange blossom water, and rose water, and accented with mahlab (an aromatic white spice commonly used in Middle Eastern baked goods). The filling is usually made with dates, pistachios, or walnuts. Maamoul cookies are found in every Lebanese home during Eid and Easter—they’re rich, buttery, and extremely indulgent!

Plain and Pistachio-Filled Sanioura: These simple sanioura cookies are ones I turn to when I need a quick and tasty treat. But fair warning: they’re dangerous to keep around—you’ll be snacking on them all day long!

Almond Paste-Stuffed Cookies: These soft cookies are loaded with an ultra-delicious almond flavor! You could call them an “adult cookie”—an elegant, beautifully scented treat to enjoy with your morning coffee or afternoon tea.

Iraqi Kleicha: Resembling tiny pinwheels, these round, date-filled kleicha are a staple treat in Iraqi households around Eid! They pair so well with coffee or tea and would beautifully round out a cookie assortment. They’re a bit of a project to make, but worth every minute of it.

Chocolate Chip Crescent Cookies: These melt-in-your-mouth buttery cookies are loaded with chocolate chips and a dash of banana extract, then coated in powdered sugar. They’re so unbelievably good that they don’t last a day in my house!

Let’s Stay in Touch!

Tamara Ghraybeh (Lebanese Date-Filled Cookies with Pistachios)

5 from 1 vote

Prep: 1 hour hour

Cook: 22 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 22 minutes minutes

Servings 40 pieces

Course

Dessert

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Snacks

Cuisine

#Middle Eastern

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Lebanese

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Mediterranean

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Description

I recommend using a kitchen scale to measure the dough ingredients. For this particular recipe, weighing the ingredients is much more accurate than measuring them by volume, so you can be confident that you’re following the recipe exactly.

Ingredients

 

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Dough

• ▢ 500 g 1 lb 2 oz all-purpose flour — about 4 cups
• ▢ 250 g 9 oz ghee — about 1¼ cups
• ▢ 200 g 7 oz powdered sugar — about 1½ cups

Date Filling

• ▢ 500 g 1 lb 2 oz dates, preferably a soft variety such as Medjool or Omani dates
• ▢ 2 tablespoons orange blossom water
• ▢ ½ teaspoon mastic gum crushed with a pinch of sugar — optional, but highly recommended
• ▢ 2 tablespoons ghee
• ▢ 2 cups raw shelled pistachios, roughly crushed

Instructions

 

• Place the ghee and powdered sugar in a large bowl and mix with your hands until well combined. Add the flour a little at a time, mixing with your fingertips. The mixture may initially look crumbly; continue kneading until it comes together into a cohesive dough. Knead for a few more minutes, until the dough has a smooth, pliable texture.

  Alternatively, you can use a stand mixer. Transfer the dough to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for just 20 minutes.
• Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C), with a rack positioned in the center of the oven.
• In the meantime, prepare the date filling: Cut the dates open and remove the pits with a serrated knife.
• Transfer the dates to a food processor and add the ghee, orange blossom water, and mastic gum, if using. Blend until you have a smooth paste. If your food processor has trouble breaking down the dates, add a couple of tablespoons of water and continue blending.

  Roll the date mixture into small balls, about 2 inches in diameter. If the mixture sticks to your hands, lightly grease them with a little oil. Set aside.
• Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
• Place the raw pistachios in a food processor and pulse a few times, until roughly ground. Transfer them to a large plate and spread them out in a single layer.
• To Assemble: Remove the dough from the refrigerator and knead it well again. Take a bite-sized piece of dough, slightly larger than the date balls. Make a hole in the center of the dough with your finger, then place a date ball inside. Gently pinch the dough together to seal the opening, then roll it into a ball.

  Using your hands, shape the date-filled ball into a miniature log, continuing to smooth and shape the dough until it is even and free of cracks. Dip the log into the crushed pistachios, gently pressing to help the pistachios adhere to both sides.

  Roll the log back and forth once more on the countertop to firmly press the pistachios into the dough. Carefully transfer the cookies to the parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing them about 1 inch apart.
  
• Bake one sheet pan at a time, in the center of the oven. Watch the tamara carefully as it bakes, and follow the recommended oven temperature and baking time so that you can remove it at exactly the right moment.

  The tamara should remain snow white. To achieve this while ensuring that it is fully cooked, it needs to be baked at a low temperature. Typically, bake it at 300°F / 150°C for 20–22 minutes.
  
• Tamara ghraybeh will be slightly soft when they come out of the oven, but they will firm up as they cool. Avoid touching or moving them while they are still hot, as they can break easily.
• Don’t ruin your efforts by rushing the cooling process. Tamara cookies need to be completely cool to the touch before you store them. Warm cookies release condensation, which can make your Tamara soggy—something we definitely want to avoid.
• A cookie this festive calls for a good cup of coffee on the side. Divine.
  

Video

Notes

If you make “Tamara Ghraybeh,” leave a comment below or share your pictures on Facebook! I’d love to see your creations! #Hadia’s lebanese Cuisine

 

Keyword dates, ghraybeh, tamara

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