Kadayif (pastry)

Kadayif is a sweet spun Middle Eastern pastry popular in the Balkans and Levant, used for various Middle Eastern desserts.

Preparation

Kadayif is made from fine dough threads with a filling of milled almonds or walnuts and sugar syrup. This filling is seasoned with vanilla sugar and then wrapped in the dough threads. After baking and cooling, it is soaked in lemon sugar syrup.

Kadayif comes from the plural of the Arabic word “qatifah”, which means velvet. The same ingredient is called “kunafa” in Arabic, which refers to another dessert similar to kadayıf but stuffed with cheese. The name first appeared in an Ottoman translation of the Arabic cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh translated by Muhammed bin Mahmud Şirvani, a 15th-century Ottoman physician. According to oral tradition in Diyarbakır, the first kadayif vendor in the city was an Armenian shop owner named Agop.
A version filled with walnuts or pistachios flavored with cinnamon was traditionally served by the Sephardic Jewish community of Jerusalem during Rosh Hashanah and Purim.

There are many recipes and desserts using Kadayif with some of them being documented in the first Ottoman printed cookbook, Melceü't-Tabbâhîn.