Just can't get (vegan, allergen-free) knafeh
It's been a long time since I first heard of the "Viral Dubai" (ugh)/
FIX Dessert Can't Get Knafeh of It chocolate bar. Obviously, a bar that uses tree nuts, sesame and dairy wasn't going to work well for me regardless, so I was happy to see that there were creators like
Emmymade who were sharing their homemade recipes for the dessert. Emmy's video in particular confirmed that the textural experience alone was worth attempting to adapt this treat to my sensitivities at least once.
So I had Caty order the
Fidqiog Chocolate Bar Mold for me when she recently had Amazon Prime. I also made sure I had phyllo dough on-hand, a jar of
pumpkin seed butter, cocoa butter, dairy-free chocolate and a good quality
plant-based butter.
Caty got the mold to me at Em and Austin's housewarming party this past Saturday and I had the time to be able to assemble a bar today. Here are the ingredients I used:
Pumpkin Seed Cream (Pistachio Cream substitute)
55g 42g cocoa butter
125g 95g pumpkin seed butter
25g 20g icing sugar
- additional sugar to taste (I added
4g 3g granulated sugar to the complete filling mix)
Crispy, feuilletine-inspired kaitifi
30g 23g vegan butter
25g 20g granulated sugar
70g 53g knife-shredded phyllo pastry
Also
- 250g dairy-free chocolate
Method:
- In a double boiler, melt cocoa butter over medium heat. Add pumpkin seed butter and stir until well incorporated. Sift in icing sugar. Stir well. Set aside.
- In a shallow pan, melt vegan butter over medium-low heat. Add sugar and watch until sugar becomes golden. Take off heat and immediately add kaitifi/shredded phyllo pastry. Toss pastry to coat. Set aside to cool.
- Taste a small amount of the golden kaitifi. If it's not crispy, spread the pastry shreds out on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake at 350°F until golden brown. Set aside to cool.
- When kaitifi is cooled down, stir into the pumpkin seed cream. Taste. Add additional sugar as necessary to sweeten the filling as desired.
- In a double boiler, melt chocolate over medium-low heat, stirring as necessary to ensure smoothness. If required, temper chocolate.
- Pour chocolate into mold, then turn mold to coat the insides. Allow to set for approximately 5 minutes. Pour excess chocolate back out into a separate bowl.
- Cool mold in the fridge for approximately 5 minutes to set the top and sides of the chocolate bar.
- Spoon filling into bottom of the mold. Chill for an additional 5-15 minutes to set the filling.
- Pour the remaining chocolate over the bottom of the bar (the top of the mold), scrape off excess. Chill for approximately 5 minutes until set.
This makes a
big bar of chocolate. Matt, Kara and I each had ⅓ of a row (each row is ⅕ of the total bar) for each of the two servings we shared today.
I really enjoy the way the flavours and textures come together here, and I think adding a hard-crack caramel to the kaitifi component is the way to go; it adds extra crunch to the experience, which I think saves it from resembling the "Shredded Wheat" element that others have noted. Also, I think it was the better choice that I went with a "stiffer" filling than some of the versions I've seen. This is sweet without being cloying, crispy, crunchy, gooey without being messy and blends flavours well. I could see me making this again, despite the amount of work it takes.
Next day edit: I forgot to note that I had 85g of filling left over when I made up the original batch, which I'm calculating to be about 25% of the total, so I've adjusted the filling amounts to be 75% of what I used.