Armenian cuisine is one of the oldest cuisines in Europe and the oldest in the Caucasus. The traditions of cooking many dishes remain unchanged for centuries. Armenian cuisine is complicated and time-consuming. The cooking sequence of most dishes includes more than ten process steps.
One of the leading places in Armenian cuisine belongs to sweets. Baking is prepared, as a rule, in ghee with the addition of a large number of spices and spices, and it turns out how tasty that does not leave indifferent true sweet tooth. In our article we will tell you about what Armenian sweets are prepared in this country. Recipes for baking will be presented below. Bon appetit to all!
Armenian sweets: photos, description
You can appreciate the taste of Armenian sweets only after visiting Armenia. Here you can try national pastries, dried fruits, traditional sweet pita bread, jam and marmalade and, of course, sujuk.
The first thing they can offer to taste in Armenia will be a gata. Not a single festive table is complete without this soft cake. The bride brings the gata to the groom's house with the dowry and treats the girls who will dress her to it. Another Armenian sweet delicacy is nazuk. These are tender, flaky rolls with a fat filling inside, often with nuts. Nazuk's taste is very similar to the gata, which is prepared in Yerevan.
Almost everyone cooks Armenian sweets with nuts. They even make jam from walnuts . Honey baklava stuffed with walnuts, barurik, alani (dried fruits with nuts and raisins inside) - and this is not all the sweets that can be enjoyed in Armenia. And what is the taste of real Armenian sujuk worth? Peeled walnuts are strung on a string and dipped in boiling thick syrup from grape juice. Sudzhuk dries for several days, and can be stored all winter. This is a favorite treat of all tourists who take it home with them as a souvenir.
Yerevan gata
To prepare a gata, you will need a yeast dough. First you need to put the dough in a warm place. To do this, you need milk (100 ml), 1 teaspoon of dried yeast and a little flour. After half an hour, you can begin to knead the dough. Soft butter (100 g) combined with sugar (4 tbsp. Tablespoons), vanilla, eggs (2 pcs.). Then add ¼ teaspoon of salt and gradually add about 0.5 kg of flour. Give the dough a good fit in a warm place.
The filling for the gata is called choriz or in other words, the shtreisel. To prepare the butter and flour crumbs, it will be necessary to grind the melted butter (200 g) with powdered sugar (1 tbsp.) And flour (200 g). Gata is formed in the same way as Ossetian pies or khachapuri. First, the dough needs to be divided into three layers, each of them is thinly rolled out and the filling is laid out. Then the edges of the cakes are connected from above, after which the resulting ball is again thinly rolled with a rolling pin. Before being sent to the oven, patterns are applied to the gata and pierced with a fork in several places. Pies are baked for 20-25 minutes.
From the specified amount of ingredients, three Armenian gata sweets will be obtained at once. And you should remember that immediately after the oven, you need to put the hot pie under the towel.
How to cook nazuk Armenian pastries
Nazuk tastes very much like gata, as the filling in these sweets is prepared identically. But the dough itself and the baking dish are still different. Nazuk is made from unleavened dough based on yogurt. Although in our conditions this traditional Armenian sour-milk drink can be completely replaced with kefir. For the dough, chop cold butter (250 g) with flour (2 tbsp.) Into crumbs. Add salt and soda (0.5 tsp), and then gradually introduce a glass of yogurt. Knead the dough, divide it into 3 parts, cover with foil and send to the refrigerator.
Prepare the filling of ghee (80 g), flour and icing sugar (1.5 tbsp each). Grind the ingredients well into crumbs. Distribute the third part of the filling evenly on a dough ball rolled in a rectangle, then roll it up with a roll and transfer to a baking sheet. Cut the prepared rolls directly into the baking dish into portioned pieces, move them slightly apart and send the baking sheet to the oven for 30 minutes.
Nazuk Armenian sweets taste like sugar cookies. They turn out very tender and juicy.
Armenian sujuk recipe
For the preparation of Armenian sujuk (in Georgia it is called churchkhela), peeled walnuts are strung on a string. To do this, one end of it is tied in a knot, and on the second a fixed paper clip is fixed. The length of the thread should be about 50 cm. When the nut bunch is ready, you can begin to prepare thick doshab grape juice.
For this, natural or packaged grape juice (2 l) must be simmered for about 2 hours, adding sugar (1 tbsp), cloves and stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. Then you will need to add a glass of flour, cinnamon and cardamom (1 teaspoon each). Cook until the mass becomes similar in consistency to jelly. After that, you will need to lower the bunch of nuts into it, then take it out, dry it by hanging it over the dishes, lower it again with the juice, and so repeat 3-4 times or more. For the last time, the Armenian sweets of Sujuk should dry well. You can try it after 2 months, after it reaches the desired state.
Armenian sweet Alani
The traditional Armenian sweet Alani is dried peaches stuffed with walnuts. Certain varieties of ripe but hard peaches are peeled off, held over sulfuric smoke to maintain color, dried, and the bones are removed. After that, the fruit is stuffed with walnuts, honey, cinnamon and cardamom. Ready sweets in shape are no different from fresh peaches. They are stored in a dark and dry place, since dried fruits are very afraid of moisture.
Armenian sweets with walnuts - Alani will turn out to be no less tasty if stuffed with peaches, not dried apricots. For home cooking, this recipe is the most optimal.
For Alani, dried apricots must first be soaked in hot water. Then prepare the filling in the form of chopped finely walnuts (200 g) and sugar. In the dried apricots, find the hole through which the stone was extracted, and stuff it with minced nuts. Sprinkle dried fruit with icing sugar before serving.
How to cook baklava in Armenian
Armenian baklava consists of four cakes with a layer in the form of chopped nuts, honey, sugar and whipped proteins that hold this whole mixture inside. From above, the workpiece is greased with yolk and decorated with walnuts if desired.
Baklava is baked for 15 minutes at a temperature of 210 degrees. Then it is cut into portioned pieces (lozenges), poured with melted butter and sugar-honey syrup. The dish then goes to the oven for another 30 minutes.
Barurik: Armenian sweet
In Armenia, you can try another sweet treat called Baburik. This is a snail-shaped roll with lots of nut filling. The dough for him is prepared from a glass of flour, butter (100 g), water (50 ml) and a pinch of salt. After mixing, it must rest for 15-20 minutes under the film.
Baburik Armenian sweets consist of thinly rolled dough with lots of nut filling. To cook it you will need finely chopped nuts, sugar (½ tbsp.) And some butter. First, the dough with the filling rolls up with a roll, and then fits into the shape of a snail. Baburik is baked for about 30 minutes. It is cut into portioned slices only after cooling.
Mikado Cake
Armenian sweets in large quantities are surely served at the festive table. This is one of its main attributes. But besides national pies, rolls and dried fruits with nuts, cakes are also popular in Armenia. It is impossible to imagine Armenian sweets for the holiday without the traditional Mikado cake.
To prepare the dough for a small cake consisting of 5-6 cakes, you will need 300 g of flour, butter (70 g), sugar (50 g) and the same amount of sour cream. As well as a small egg, salt, ½ teaspoon of soda, quenched with vinegar. To begin with, the butter is ground with salt and sugar, then sour cream and soda are added, and then flour is gradually introduced. The dough is divided into 5-6 cakes, which need to be thinly rolled and baked in the oven for 2.5 minutes each.
Grease the cakes with a cream of boiled condensed milk, butter (200 g) and melted chocolate. The sides and top of the finished cake must be sprinkled with grated chocolate.