Chebakia

Chebakia

In Moroccan Arabic: الشباكية, from the word shabaka — net. The name describes the shape: a slit strip of dough threaded through itself that opens up in the fryer into a flower or a net. In Hebrew the common spelling is “שבקייה”, and “שבקיה” and “צ’בקיה” also appear. “Griouech” is a close but different dessert — the same dough, without the folding into a flower.

Chebakia is Morocco’s Ramadan cookie: deep-fried in oil, dipped hot into hot honey, and rolled in toasted sesame seeds. Its flavor is built on three aromatic ingredients that are uncommon in other desserts — anise, orange blossom water and saffron — and it is made in large batches a week before the month begins and served every evening alongside harira. In Israel it is identified just as much with the Mimouna, and appears on its table alongside mufleta.

Prep time: 90 minutes · Rest time: 1 hour · Frying and dipping time: about 1 hour · Total: about 3.5 hours · Yield: about 40 cookies · Difficulty: high

Why a honey-fried cookie at the end of the fast

The harira-chebakia pair recurs at every Moroccan iftar meal, and it is no accident. After 14-16 hours without food or drink, blood sugar is at the lower end of the normal range, and the liver’s glycogen stores are low. A very readily available carbohydrate — honey, which is mainly glucose and fructose — is absorbed quickly and restores the subjective feeling of energy within minutes. The dates served alongside do exactly the same thing.

This logic worked well in the context in which it arose — a physical workday and two or three cookies an evening — and less well today, when the meal that follows is no longer a meal of scarcity. The same idea stands behind Turkish baklava and Iraqi kleicha: energy-dense desserts meant for a very small portion alongside bitter coffee.

The technical detail that determines the result is a temperature difference. The chebakia comes out of the oil piping hot and goes straight into hot honey, not honey at room temperature. Hot honey is thinner, quickly penetrates the pockets formed during frying and sets there as it cools; cold honey coats only the outside, and the result is sticky outside and dry inside. This is exactly the opposite of the rule for baklava — there it’s a baked pastry, the syrup must be cold, and the goal is to keep the layers crisp rather than fill pockets.

Ingredients (for about 40 cookies)

For the dough:

• 500 grams white flour
• 100 grams toasted and ground sesame seeds
• 50 grams ground almonds
• 1 egg
• 100 ml vegetable oil (or half oil, half melted butter)
• 1 teaspoon ground anise, 1 teaspoon ground fennel, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• A pinch of saffron + 1/2 teaspoon turmeric (for color), soaked in hot water
• 1 teaspoon dry yeast
• 2 tablespoons vinegar or lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons orange blossom water (mazhar)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Lukewarm water as needed

For frying and dipping:

• Oil for deep-frying (about 200 grams absorbed in total)
• 500-700 grams honey (about 350 grams absorbed)
• 2 tablespoons orange blossom water
• 50 grams toasted sesame seeds, for rolling

Choosing ingredients and substitutes

Orange blossom water is also called zahar water and is sold in spice and baking shops. Use a culinary product, not perfume, and not the same amount of a concentrated extract. You can leave out the orange blossom water in the honey, and in the dough replace the two tablespoons with two tablespoons of water and half a teaspoon of orange zest. Anise and fennel are different spices; if you don’t have anise, you can skip it. The saffron is also optional in this version.

Method

1. Knead a stiff dough. Mix all the dough ingredients and add water gradually until you have a stiff, smooth dough — much stiffer than bread dough. A dough that is too soft won’t hold the slits during frying and the shape will open up.
2. Rest. Cover and leave for an hour. The rest is essential so the dough can later be rolled out without springing back.
3. Roll thin. Roll part of the dough into a sheet 2-3 mm thick, and use a fluted pastry wheel to cut rectangles of about 8x5 cm.
4. Slit. Cut 4-5 parallel slits lengthwise in each rectangle, without cutting through the two ends.
5. Thread and fold. Pick up every second strip on your finger, pull and turn the rectangle through itself, and press the two ends together. This is the only part of the recipe that takes practice — the first pieces will come out asymmetrical, and that’s fine.
6. Fry slowly. Fry in oil over medium-low heat (about 160 degrees Celsius, 320°F) until deep golden, about 4-5 minutes. Oil that is too hot browns the outside and leaves the inside raw, and the chebakia will stay floury.
7. Dip in hot honey. Heat the honey with the orange blossom water to about 60-70 degrees (don’t boil — boiling honey turns bitter). Transfer the chebakia straight from the oil to the honey for 5-7 minutes, until they sink and stop bubbling.
8. Drain and roll. Lift out onto a rack, immediately sprinkle with toasted sesame, and cool completely before storing.

Nutrition facts and calorie estimate

The recommended serving is one cookie of about 35 grams.

Two ingredients determine almost everything here, and both enter the dish after the dough is already made. The first is the frying oil: chebakia absorbs on average about 5 grams of oil per cookie, meaning about 45 calories — more than a quarter of the serving. The second is the honey: of the 500-700 grams in the pot, about 350 grams is absorbed, which is about 9 grams of honey per cookie and about 30 calories. The dough itself is only about 90 calories.

That tells you what can be changed. The honey is hard to cut down, because the dipping time determines the absorption, not the amount in the pot — shortening the dip to three minutes cuts about 15 calories. The frying oil, by contrast, is easy to reduce: when fried at the right temperature (160 degrees), the dough absorbs less oil than in lukewarm oil, where it spends a long time in relatively cool oil.

The important perspective is quantity. One cookie of 165 calories is a reasonable dessert. Four cookies — the portion actually served on an iftar plate — are 660 calories and 28 grams of sugar, more than the recommended daily limit for added sugar for a woman (about 25 grams) and most of the limit for a man (about 36 grams). See also sugar industry tactics and the comparison of honey, silan and maple.

Variations and tips

• Baked version: bake at 180 degrees for about 20 minutes instead of frying. It drops to about 125 calories per cookie, at the cost of a harder texture and fewer pockets to absorb honey.
• Short dip: 3 minutes instead of 7 cuts about 15 calories per cookie and leaves a less sticky cookie.
• Silan instead of honey: possible, with a deeper flavor and almost identical calories. Orange blossom water, on the other hand, is the ingredient that has no substitute.
• Storage: in an airtight container at room temperature it keeps for a whole month — honey is a natural preservative. Don’t refrigerate: the cold crystallizes the honey and hardens the cookie.

Summary

Chebakia is a cookie whose difficulty is concentrated in two places — folding the net and controlling the temperatures. The dough is cheap and simple, but frying at 160 degrees and dipping in hot honey are the difference between a crisp cookie that keeps for a month and a greasy, floury one. At about 165 calories per cookie, it’s a reasonable dessert at one or two, and a heavy one at four. It is served alongside harira and msemen, and more recipes are in Moroccan cuisine.