Yesterday we have invited my boyfriend’s family for tea. To bring some Maltese flavour in Germany, I baked some Kwarezimal biscuits and our guests loved them. I don’t yet have a Maltese recipe book, so I googled for Kwarezimal recipe, went through some of them and came up with the recipe customisation that you will find below.
Once I start eating Kwarezimal, I can never stop. I seem to like a lot the taste of cinnamon mixed with the taste of orange. mmm!
To make it vegan and also because I am not a big fan of honey, I always remove the honey and nut topping part from every Kwarezimal recipe. Also, I’ve changed their shape and size to a small round biscuit shape, to make them more practical to serve and eat.
A brief history concerning how the Kwarezimal came to be in Malta. Kwarezimal were introduced in Malta by the Knights of Malta. The name comes from the word Quarezima which refers to the 40 fasting days of Lent. You will notice that the Kwarezimal recipe contains cocoa powder and sugar as at the time these two ingredients weren’t considered as sweets but as spices.
Ingredients:
- 200 g ground almonds
- 200 g organic wholemeal flour
- 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
- 100 g sugar
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp orange blossom water
- Grated peel of 1/2 orange
- 1 cup water
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas Mark 4).
- Line a baking tray with baking paper.
- Add all ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix.
- Place spoon sized portions of the mixture onto the baking paper to have biscuit sized portions.
- Bake for 10 minutes and make sure they cool down before you take a bite.
I hope you will love my version of the Kwarezimal recipe. Do you have another version of this recipe, do let me know.