Sabirah's Kitchen

these are delicious and sooo easy to make, but be careful, they are very sticky! they are also called seker pare in turkey.

They go very nicely with a cup of strong (cardamom) coffee or just a cup of tea!

I'm personally not very fond of cardamom though...

ingredients for a lot of seker pare:

500g standard flour

2 eggs

200g sugar

200g desiccated coconut

250g margarine or butter (i prefer margarine)

1 tsp baking powder

and some nuts of your choice, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts.. I opted for almonds

to make the syrup:

1kg sugar (yes it has to be that much)

750 ml water

a cinnamon stick

a couple of crushed cardamom pods or alternatively 2-3 cloves

it pays to make the syrup in advance as either the cakes or the syrup should be cold in order to come out allright. You probably won't need as much syrup but you can save it for some other yummy things and keep it in the fridge. Mix the ingredients for the syrup in a saucepan and boil for about 10-20 minutes until it's... well, syrup! Then let it cool down...

to make the cakes, mix the dry ingredients to a smooth dough, take pieces of dough with a table spoon and make balls out of it. Place the balls on a greased and lined cake tin and lightly press them to a flatter shape. Pop a nut onto each cake.

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees (celcius) or 300 Fahreheit and bake until light brown in color.

Once they are baked, dunk the cakes twice or thrice into the syrup until they are nicely soaked and covered and hide from kids and husband.