Welcome to day 16 of our Cookie Advent Calendar!

We are fast approaching Christmas: we will have a very humble Christmas day as here in Italy you cannot exit your city of residence on 25 and 26 Dec. and we have no relatives in this city, even if my parents are very few miles away we can’t reach them or see them somewhere.

Same is planned for 31 Dec./ 1 Jan. so we will save a lot speaking of food and presents but this is not cheering me up a lot!

Posting 25 different recipes trying to stay original wasn’t easy, luckly I love surfing around the cooking cultures of the world then I remembered ghoriba, cookies usually made with almonds ( but you can personalize them) typical from Maghreb but prepared in almost the whole Arabic world.

Print Recipe

Coconut ghoriba, typical cookies from Maghreb.

Servings: 30

Ingredients

180 g semolina
120 g caster sugar
80 g shredded dried coconut
140 ml ( about 1/2 cup+ 1 tbsp) sunflower oil or similar
2 eggs
1 pinch salt
1/2 vanilla pod ( seeds only)
1/2 bag baking powder
icing sugar

Instructions

Mix together semolina, coconut, salt and baking powder.
In a bowl whisk briefly eggs with sugar, oil and vanilla seeds.
Combine the two parts and make small balls, pressing gentle with hands ( they tend to crumble, it's normal).
Put them on a lined baking tray, sprinkle with icing sugar and bake in preheated oven at 170°C/ 340°F for 10-15 minutes ( they don't have to brown, mine are already too gold).
Wait for them to cool completely, you can store them in a tin box up to a month.

I’ve eaten them thanks to a lady from Morocco, a family friend.

They were made with coconut and they were delicious so here you hare the recipe!