Riyadh Sweets: The Date and Wheat Canon, and the Famous Imports

Walk into a sweet shop in Riyadh and the display will be dominated by kunafa, maamoul and trays of syrup-soaked pastry. All of it is delicious and almost none of it is Najdi. The sweets that belong to central Saudi Arabia are quieter, browner and built from two ingredients this region has always had: dates and wheat.

Both halves are worth eating. It just helps to know which is which.

The Najdi canon: dates and wheat

Hanaini is the one to look for. Dates and brown whole-wheat bread worked together into something dense and dark, eaten in winter and appearing constantly at Ramadan iftar in Riyadh Province. If you have grown up with sticky toffee pudding it will feel oddly familiar, though it is far less sweet and much more of the grain.

Al-mahla is a slow one. Dates are soaked for as long as eight hours, then combined with wheat flour and ghee and stirred for around three hours, and it is served hot. It tastes like what it is: patience.

Al-marassi and al-masabib work from the same three ingredients, whole wheat flour, honey and ghee. The masabib is a thick pancake. Both are described in Saudi sources as among the oldest sweets of Riyadh Province.

Kleeja is the travelling one, a cookie stuffed with date paste, strongly associated with Qassim, which is Najd. Qassim is the largest producer of it in the Gulf and it even has its own festival. Because it keeps, it is the sweet people carry home, so it is the easiest of the canon to buy as a gift.

Notice the pattern. No syrup, no cheese, no filo. Dates for sweetness, wheat for body, ghee and honey to bind. It is the sweet half of the same logic that gives you the broth and dough dishes on the savoury side.

Areeka sits awkwardly between categories, a soft cooked dough served with dates, ghee and honey. Saudi sources claim it for both the southern region and for Riyadh Province, where it is eaten in winter, so treat it as a southern and central dish rather than an import, and expect it at breakfast as often as after dinner.

The imports, and they are old ones

Kunafa is Levantine, usually attributed to Nablus: spun pastry, sugar syrup, cheese or cream. Maamoul, the shortbread stuffed with dates, walnuts or pistachios, is Levantine too, though the date filling makes it feel entirely at home in the Gulf. Neither is Saudi in origin, and both are everywhere, carried in by confectioners who have been working in the Kingdom for generations. Old and genuine, just not from here.

Luqaimat, the little fried dough balls in syrup, are Saudi, but they are strongest in the west of the country rather than in Najd, and they are Ramadan food above all. Debyaza, made from apricot paste and nuts, is a Hejazi Eid sweet.

What to do with this

If you have one sweet in Riyadh, make it hanaini or kleeja, because you cannot easily get either at home and both tell you something about where you are. If you have a second, have the kunafa, because it is superb and nobody is pretending otherwise.

Coffee is the other half of this. Saudi sweets are built to sit beside a small cup of cardamom coffee rather than a mug of anything, and the coffee and dates guide covers how that ritual actually works. For the whole picture, start from what to eat in Riyadh.

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FAQ

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