Lokmat El kadi; a crunchy lokmat better than dessert shops.
Lokmat el kadi or zalabia or awama is a popular Middle Eastern dessert. It is a crunchy dough ball immersed in a syrup.
Lokmat el kadi is an arabic word means the judge's morsel. It was thought that these balls were the formal meals for judges during their work. As judges were very busy at their work, these small balls were an easy fast meal for them.
Nowadays, dessert shops add chocolate sauce over lokmat which makes it so yummy. Also you can decorate it with minced nuts.
The secret behind my recipe is frying lokmat twice. In many dessert shops, they don't have time to fry it twice. So once you go home with lokmat, you find it soft and non crunchy.
Lokmat recipe is fast and easy, let's do it;
Ingredients:
For lokmat:
2 cups flour.
1 tablespoon active yeast.
1 tablespoon cornstarch.
1 tablespoon sugar.
1 cup warm water.
Oil.
For syrup:
3/4 cup sugar.
3/4 cup water.
1 small lemon juice or vanilla.
Preparation:
For syrup:
In a deep pan, add water, sugar, lemon juice and stir with a spoon.
Put the pan over medium high heat and stir for 5 min, then test the syrup by placing a drop on the table. The drop should hold itself and don’t spread.
For lokmat:
In a mixing bowl, mix flour with sugar, yeast and corn starch.
Add warm water little by little and knead until the dough is stretchy like photo below. You may need more or less water.
Cover the bowel and let the dough rest for 15 min.
Put some oil on your hand as the dough is sticky, then put the dough in a pastry bag with a circular cone tip.
In a frying pan, add oil over medium high heat. When oil is starting to be hot, turn down the heat to a low heat to avoid lokmat popping out.
Bring a scissor and put some oil over tips, then cut the dough while compressing on the pastry bag. “look at photo below”.
Strain the lokmat from oil when its color starts to be golden, then leave it to cool down.
Put the lokmat in oil again over low heat until it is golden in color then strain them and put them directly in the syrup for 10 min.
Strain lokmat from syrup, then pour some of the syrup over lokmat.
