By Joell Folger
What’s the Deal With Dubai Chocolate Anyway?
Hello Everyone,
Here’s a shocker, I’m not on Tik Tok. Therefore, I was very late to the trend that is Dubai chocolate. It was showing up inside of ice cream donut cones, (yes, I mean a donut contorted into a classic ice cream cone shape) as a filling in cakes at the local market and bars in all forms. But, why? What was so special about it?
At a French bakery on Cape Cod, they offer pistachio and dark chocolate torsades. As is one of my favorite treats. Which is why the intrigue from the frenzy to the actual flavors, chocolate and pistachios, got the best of me. I purchased a box of bite sized Dubai Chocolate pieces. Those were better off left on the shelf. They were terrible, so disappointing. The chocolate was thin in flavor and thickness, the center was a sad and hard pale green color. Blah! Certainly nothing for the globe to go crazy for. This disappointment prompted me to dig a little further.
The true name of this modern chocolate confection is “Can’t Get Knafel Of It”. It’s the result of two friends combining two favorite desserts into one. The filling is pistachio paste, tahini and the crispiness comes from toasted kadayif. Kadayif is finely shredded phyllo dough that is lightly toasted to a golden brown. All of that is encased in chocolate, for me the darker the chocolate the better.
I then polled my family to see if anyone had tried it and what they thought of it. My sister in-law loves it and my mother in-law was buying ingredients to make some. How serendipitous for me! I jumped at the chance to create this chocolate sensation.
We used the recipe from the New York Times. You can find it here.
www.cooking.nyt.com/recipes/1026519-dubai-chocolate I did find the entire experience to be extremely satisfying on many levels.
For our first batch we used roasted and unsalted pistachios. The green color was pretty, but not vibrant or dare I say, neon. The second batch was with raw pistachios and the color was brighter for sure. The flavor difference was very subtle, I think it is the salted vs unsalted that would have a bigger taste variation. This was about the color of raw vs roasted.
While I was busy at the food processor whipping up the pistachio paste, Janet toasted the kadayif. Watching the nuts break down into a beautiful pale green paste, the smell from the toasting kadayif was almost as nutty as the pistachio paste. The color and texture transformation, so satisfying. Then came time to combine these two ingredients.
As the mixture was cooling/resting, we set to melting the chocolate. We skipped the double boiler method and went right to the microwave. This was not the best decision as past mistakes of burnt chocolate with the lingering smell of destruction held me back from getting the chocolate hot enough. For this batch, we used milk and semi-sweet chocolates. Um, and well the bottom halves of a few bars got all semi to dark chocolate.
Had the chocolate been at the proper temperature, it would have been silkier and thinner to cover the bar molds.
As the bars set up in the fridge, and we ate the tibbits clinging to the sides of both bowls, I knew what the buzz was about. Our homemade Dubai chocolate was on a completely different level than the sad stuff I purchased. The creamy, while crunchy nutty filling surrounded by chocolate – so very satisfying and decadent. I appreciated our thicker layer of chocolate, no matter the melting temperature, and the freshness of the ingredients, the frenzy over this confection is well placed.
While I find the Dubai chocolate to be delicious and crave-worthy, it was almost more satisfying for me to make it than to eat it. Deep down, though, it makes me happy to share kitchen experiments with others, seeing them enjoy the efforts is pure satisfaction.
