The sun is shining, spring is slowly arriving and it’s almost Easter. Wait…what! How is it already Easter in two weeks. I haven’t even finished writing down my 2017 goals yet. But hey, I’m on time for the yearly overdose of Easter recipe. Maybe I’m even the first one you see this year. If I tell you that this is more or less an accident, would you believe me? Though I really wish I would be a little bit more organized when it comes to blog content (and goal setting) but I just don’t care much about holiday recipes. Neither Valentine’s Day cakes nor Easter bread or Christmas cookies (though I did actually post one last year here).
The reason why I now deliberately post these Maltese Easter Biscuits (also called Kwarezimal, good luck with the pronunciation) is because I recently went to Malta (read A Quick Food Guide to Malta), ate these spicy and chewy cookies and loved them. Lucky me, Kwarezimal are usually baked during Lent and are also very popular as an Easter treat. Admittedly I didn’t eat one of these biscuits until my last day when I was already at the airport. I had seen those longs cookie bars throughout the previous days but belly space and other food priorities did not allow me to buy one. Surprisingly the Kwarezimal I got at a commercial coffee shop at the airport was very delicious. Soft, chewy with a hint of citrus flavor and reminded me a little bit of Christmas flavour.
‘If a Kwarezimal at the airport is that tasty, a homemade one must be even better’ I thought to myself and wrote down a memo in my notebook. Two weeks and 30 min later I dipped one of my freshly baked Kwarezimal in a cup of hot tea. The only challenge about this recipe is finding orange flower water. I couldn’t find it in Istanbul so had to omit it. Instead I added a little more citrus zest, also because it’s the end of citrus season and I’ll dearly miss it.
Maltese Easter Biscuits (Kwarezimal)
- 100 grams almond meal
- 100 grams gluten-free flour (or any other flour like whole wheat flour)
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ⅛ tsp (a pinch) clove
- 50 grams coconut sugar
- 1 tbsp grape seed oil (or melted coconut oil)
- 80-100 ml water
- 1 mandarin, zest
- ½ orange, zest
- 1.5 lemon, zest
- optional: ½ orange flower water (if available in your country, I didn't use it as I could find it in Istanbul)
- 2 - 4 tbsp coconut or maple syrup
- 2 tbs ground pistachios
- 1 tbsp ground almonds
- Preheat oven to 180 °C/ 355 °F
- In a bowl mix almond meal, flour, cinnamon, clove, coconut sugar, zest of ½ orange, 1 mandarin and 1 lemon
- Add 80 ml of water, oil and orange flower water (optional) and stir well
- Knead into a stiff dough, add more water if too dry but just one tsp at a time
- Take 2-3 tbsp of dough and form the dough into rectangular shapes (the dough will not expand during baking)
- Bake for 20 min or until slightly brown, not too long as they get very dry quickly
- In a small bowl combine ground pistachio, ground almonds and zest of ½ lemon
- While still warm, spread syrup on top of biscuits and press on nut lemon zest mixture
- Serve with tea or coffee
Oh wow Kati, die Bilder, bin verliebt!! Und das Rezept klingt echt super lecker! Hab ein tolles Wochenende 💕
Vielen lieben Dank Verena, es freut mich sehr, dass es dir so gut gefällt 🙂 Hab ein schönes Wochenende. x Kati