I few years back I stumbled upon a wonderfully simple recipe, by Gemma Stafford of Bigger Bolder Baking, for making ice cream without an ice cream machine. My boys and I had a lot of fun creating custom flavours with this ice cream for a long time. Eventually the recipe fell into the back of our collection and has been waiting to be rediscovered ever since.
This year Ramadan came in the summer so it was crucial to find a dessert that embodied traditional Lebanese sweets with a cooling twist. We decided our recipe needed to have ashta cream or a variation of it, since that’s an essential part of most of our Lebanese desserts. So we chose one of our favourite Lebanese sweets to recreate as a cold summer treat. Maamoul Med is a layered Buttery semolina dough infused with rose water, sandwiching a velvety ashta cream. Sandwiching the maamoul with ice cream instead of ashta became our goal and obsession!
Making ice cream at home is not accessible to many because we don’t all have expensive ice cream machines, and for this recipe you won’t need one. If, however; you have an cream machine and a favourite ice cream base, you can use that instead and just add our customizing flavours.
The ice cream recipe requires just two simple ingredients- heavy whipping cream and sweet and condensed milk. If the sweetness of condensed milk is too heavy for your liking then Gemma recommends replacing it with low-fat or fat-free condensed milk, or visit her page for a homemade recipe.
We customized our ashta flavoured ice cream by adding rose water, blossom water and ground pistachios. Now this is no where close to the Arabic ashta ice ream but we believe it does a good job of capturing the essence.
For the maamoul cookie we used our maamoul dough from the stuffed maamoul recipe and it worked perfectly for this purpose.
We made this recipe as ice cream sandwiches to mimic Maamoul med, but we also made two other variations. We rolled the dough into thin triangle cookies and plate them with ice cream or cut into wedges and served warm along side the ashta ice cream.
DIRECTIONS
Ice Cream
Follow directions as instructed on Bigger Bolder Baking site and add rose water, blossom water and pistachio in step four before turning off machine.
Maamoul
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- To make thin triangle cookies roll dough out very thin and cut into triangle shape. bake in 350 F oven until golden; remove from oven, re-cut shapes and leave to cool before serving on the side of ashta ice cream.
- To make rectangle cookie for ice cream sandwiches roll dough length wise to 1/8th of an inch and cut into equal size rectangles, removing excess dough. Score top of dough with fork in criss-cross shape and bake in 350 F oven until golden brown; remove cookie from oven and re- cut shape; leave to rest and set before moving to cooling rack. fill cookie with ashta ice cream and roll in crushed pistachio; eat right away or wrap and freeze for later.
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- To make maamoul wedges shape dough into a circle disc and slice into wedges. Bake at 350 F until slightly golden then separate wedges and bake until golden. Remove the wedges from the oven, and cool briefly on the pan. Serve warm next to ashta ice cream.
- To make thin triangle cookies roll dough out very thin and cut into triangle shape. bake in 350 F oven until golden; remove from oven, re-cut shapes and leave to cool before serving on the side of ashta ice cream.
Maamoul with Kashta Ice Cream {معمول و بوظة بالقشطة}
Ingredients
Ice Cream
- 2 cups heavy whipping cream, cold (450 ml )
- 14 ounces sweetened condensed milk (fat-free or regular) (1 Can) cold
- 1 tsp rose water
- 1 tsp orange blossom water
- 2 tbsp ground pistachios
- 1/3 cup crushed pistachios for garnish
Maamoul
- 1½ cups semolina #2
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp mahlab
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 cup butter- at room temperature
- 1 tbsp rose water
- + more as needed
- 0.5 cup semolina #2 for rolling dough
Instructions
Ice Cream
- Follow directions as instructed on the Bigger Bolder Baking site and add rose water, blossom water, and pistachio in step four before turning off the machine.
Maamoul
- Mix semolina, flour, spices (nutmeg, mahlab), and sugar together in a mixing bowl.
- Cut butter into mixture until a fine and even consistency is formed, rest dough for 10 minutes before moving on to the next step.
- Add 1 tbsp rosewater and knead it into the dough to form a softball.Tip: If the dough feels dry slowly add more rose water 1 tsp at a time.
- Let dough rest for 30 minutes in a cool space or refrigerate.
- Once ready to bake, spread parchment paper on a baking sheet, sprinkle with semolina put a second layer over the dough, and roll out.
- To make thin triangle cookies roll the dough out very thin and cut into a triangle shape. bake in 350 F oven until golden; move from oven, re-cut shapes and leave to cool before serving on the side of ashta ice cream.
- To make rectangle cookies for ice cream sandwiches roll the dough lengthwise to 1/8th of an inch and cut into equal size rectangles, removing excess dough. Score top of the dough with a fork in criss-cross shape and bake in 350 F oven until golden brown; remove the cookie from oven and re-cut shape; leave to rest and set before moving to cool rack. fill the cookie with ashta ice cream and roll in crushed pistachio; eat right away or wrap and freeze for later.
- To make maamoul wedges shape dough into a circle disc and slice into wedges. Bake at 350 F until slightly golden then separate wedges and bake until golden. Remove the wedges from the oven, and cool briefly on the pan. Serve warm next to ashta ice cream.