🇲🇦 Morocco
Sellou
سلو · sellou / sfouf
A no-bake toasted-flour sweet — deeply browned flour, ground fried almonds and toasted sesame bound with butter and honey into a rich, sandy mound dusted with sugar.
Serves makes a large batch
Photo to come
Ingredients
- Toasted flour (browned deep golden)
- Fried blanched almonds, ground · toasted sesame seeds, ground
- Powdered sugar · honey
- Ground anise (and/or fennel) · cinnamon · pinch mastic or gum arabic
- Melted butter and/or warm oil, to bind
- Whole fried almonds, to top
Method
- Toast the flour in the oven, stirring often, until it’s a deep, nutty gold; sift and cool.
- Fry the almonds until golden and grind them; toast and grind most of the sesame, keeping some whole.
- Mix the flour, ground nuts and sesame with the sugar and the spices.
- Bind with melted butter and warm oil (and honey) — rub between your hands until it holds when pressed but stays sandy.
- Press into a mound, dust with powdered sugar, and crown with whole fried almonds.
The family table
Sellou (also sfouf) is a Ramadan energy sweet eaten after the fast, and a postpartum specialty offered to new mothers to rebuild their strength. It descends from zammita, an older roasted-barley-flour preparation. The rule of thumb: the flour must never outweigh the nuts and sesame, or it turns pasty. It keeps for weeks, so it’s made in big batches.
Yumma
Middle Eastern home cooking, organized by country. Your family’s version is the one that counts.