Semolina cookies in syrup (Turkish sekerpare)
Sweet, moist and tender semolina cookies that are soaked in delicious lemon-flavored sugar syrup. The semolina cookies are crumbly and simply melt in your mouth.
This is an easy and quick sekerpare recipe, that’s basically prepared by baking cookies of flour and semolina dough, decorated with almonds (or other nuts) in the middle and then dipped in a sugar syrup.
Sekerpare means “a piece of sweet” in Turkish, and is one of the most popular and loved desserts in Turkey. The cookies pair amazingly with a cup of tea or coffee, just like my easy cinnamon rolls and sweet polenta / lentil cake.
Although most authentic sekerpare recipes use a lot of sugar, my version is a little lighter and less sweet. But don’t get me wrong, the cookies will still satisfy your sweet tooth wonderfully!
I also added a bit of cardamom powder to the recipe, because I just love the taste of cardamom. Although adding this flavor doesn’t make it an authentic sekerpare cookie anymore, it’s still really, really tasty. Anyways, the use of this ingredient is all up to you, and with or without… it’s delicious!
Enjoy.
Semolina cookies in syrup (Turkish sekerpare)
Sweet, moist and tender semolina cookies that are soaked in delicious lemon-flavored sugar syrup. The semolina cookies are crumbly and simply melt in your mouth. Yield: 10 cookies
Ingredients
- 60 gr (6 tbsp) fine grained semolina
- 1 egg
- 70 gr (5 tbsp) butter, room temperature
- 30 gr (5 tbsp) powdered sugar
- 140 gr (¾ cup + 2 tbsp) all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 10 nuts (like almonds, walnuts or hazelnuts)
- Salt
- Syrup:
- 170 gr (¾ cup + 1 tbsp) granulated sugar
- 240 ml ( 1 cup) water
- 0,5 or 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice (according to taste)
- ⅛ tsp cardamom powder (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180 ºC and line a baking tray with baking paper.
- Combine sugar, water and cardamom powder (optional) in a saucepan over medium/high heat and bring to a boil. Stir and let the sugar dissolve.
- Add lemon juice to the saucepan, reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes for the syrup to slightly thicken. Remove from heat and set the syrup aside to cool completely.
- In the meantime, sieve semolina, powdered sugar, flour and baking powder into a big bowl. Then add butter, one egg and a pinch of salt to the bowl.
- Knead for a couple of minutes (about 5), until you reach a soft dough. Cover with a damp cloth and set aside to rest for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes, knead the dough again for about 1 minute and divide the dough into 10 pieces (each piece about 34 gram). Roll each piece into a ping pong sized ball and gently press down on top of each ball to flatten slightly.
- Place the balls on the parchment-lined baking sheet, making sure you leave extra space between them to expand. Now push a nut in the center of each sekerpare ball and bake for 25 minutes.
- After 25 minutes take the cookies out of the oven and carefully (hot!) put them in a deep tray.
- Pour the cooled syrup with a ladle or spoon over the hot sekerpare cookies, and leave to cool for about 1 hour.
- You can re-use the syrup by pouring it on top of the cookies again.
- The cookies will start absorbing the syrup, and will be moist and tender enough to eat with a fork.
- Enjoy!
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I’m Jeanette, the blogger behind Lazy Home Cook.
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