Dubai Chocolate Stuffed Cookies

The pistachio and crispy pastry filling from the viral chocolate bar, tucked inside a cookie instead. The filling is the whole point: toast the shredded kataifi pastry until it's properly golden, because that crunch is what everyone remembers. If you can't find kataifi, crushed shredded wheat gets you surprisingly close.

1. 1

   Chop the kataifi into short lengths and toast it in a dry pan over medium heat, stirring often, until it's deep golden and smells like toast, 6 to 8 minutes. Let it cool.

   For this step

   • 2 cups (100 g) kataifi pastry
2. 2

   Stir the toasted pastry into the pistachio butter and tahini with a pinch of salt. Spoon 12 mounds onto a lined plate and freeze for 30 minutes until firm.

   For this step

   • 2 cups (100 g) kataifi pastry
   • ½ cup (130 g) pistachio butter or smooth pistachio paste
   • 2 tbsp (30 g) tahini
   • ¾ cup (170 g) unsalted butter
   • ¾ tsp fine salt
3. 3

   Beat the butter with both sugars for 2 minutes, then beat in the egg. Fold in the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt, then the chopped chocolate.

   For this step

   • ½ cup (130 g) pistachio butter or smooth pistachio paste
   • ¾ cup (170 g) unsalted butter
   • ¾ cup (165 g) light brown sugar
   • ¼ cup (50 g) granulated sugar
   • 2 cups (250 g) all-purpose flour
   • ¼ cup (21 g) cocoa powder
   • ¾ cup (128 g) dark chocolate
   • 1 tsp baking soda
   • ¾ tsp fine salt
4. 4

   Take a heaped scoop of dough, flatten it in your palm, sit a frozen pistachio mound in the middle, and pinch the dough closed around it. Roll into a ball. Repeat.

   For this step

   • ½ cup (130 g) pistachio butter or smooth pistachio paste
5. 5

   Chill the filled balls for 30 minutes. Heat the oven to 180°C / 350°F and line two trays.

6. 6

   Bake six at a time for 11 to 13 minutes. They'll look underdone in the centre and that's exactly right. Cool on the tray for 10 minutes so the filling sets enough to hold.

Tap a step to check it off. Your place is saved on this device.

Cooking in a different unit? Use the cups ↔ grams converter or the recipe scaler to halve or double this recipe.

More to cook

Viral & Easy Three-Ingredient Banana Bread Ripe bananas, self-rising flour, condensed milk. That's the whole recipe. Viral & Easy Baked Oats A single-serve blended oat bake that eats like cake but is breakfast. Viral & Easy Two-Ingredient Yogurt Bagels Self-rising flour and Greek yogurt, kneaded, shaped and boiled like a real bagel.