254 – Date Chocolate MHencha / محنشة الشيكولاتة والتمر

Ingredients :

• Filling: 150 grams dark chocolate (60% cocoa)
• Filling: 150 grams date paste
• Filling: 115 grams raw almonds
• Filling: 2 tablespoons butter
• Filling: 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• For the Dough: Warka or Phyllo dough
• For the Dough: Melted butter
• For the sauce (optional): honey + a little bit of orange blossom water

Directions :

Preparing the Filling:
1- One of the most important ingredients in this recipe, is date paste! You can buy it already made from the store or make it yourself (check out my recipe).
2- Place the date paste in the microwave for 30 seconds so it’s softer and easy to work with it.
3- The other ingredient that is important is chocolate! I use dark chocolate 60-70% cocoa content, try to use the highest quality of chocolate you can find because it really makes a difference in the taste.
4- Melt the chocolate with the butter, using the microwave or a bain marie.
5- To add texture to our paste, I am going to add almonds! I am using raw almonds, but feel free to use fried almonds, or roasted almonds, or any other nuts of your choice.
6- Using a kitchen knife, coarsly chop the almonds and add them to the melted chocolate.
7- Add the date paste to the chocolate as well. Mix well.
8- If you want an extra flavor to the chocolate date paste, add a little bit of cinnamon. However, if you are making the date paste from my recipe, no need to add the cinnamon since I already added spices in my recipe.
9- Place the chocolate date paste in the fridge for around 10-15 minutes so it hardens and we can use it more easily as a filling.
Rolling the Mhencha:
1- Now that our filling is ready, we are going to roll it in phyllo dough!
2- Phyllo dough is brittle, it breaks very easily when it dries out, so make sure to cover it with parchment paper or a wet towel when working with it.
3- Take 2 layers of phyllo dough and brush the top surface with melted butter.
4- Add the filling, shaped into a tube, lengthwise at the edge. Then gently roll the phyllo dough around it as if you were rolling a carpet. Brush with melted butter, all around.
5- To shape the Mhencha in a circular way, I am using a circular baking pan. Brush it with melted butter.
6- This recipe uses a lot of melted butter and this is the case with phyllo dough. If you want to use less butter then use Warka, which is the Moroccan phyllo dough, (check out my recipe).
7- Take the phyllo tube and roll it around, in the baking pan, in the shape of snake coiling. If it breaks, dont worry about it because we will roll more phyllo tubes around it.
8- Continue until you are done with the phyllo and the filling.
Baking the Mhencha:
1- The last step is to bake the Mhencha. Preheat your oven to 350F (180 C). The oven has to be hot.
2- Bake the Mhencha for around 35-40 minutes or until it becomes golden brown.
3- you can notice from the video that my mhencha broke, and the reason it broke is because my baking pan was too large and did not contain the pastry. It’s ok, because I was planning to cut it into small pieces for serving, but if you are planning to serve it whole, make sure the plate size fits the pastry.
4- I prepared a syrup by heating up honey with a little bit of orange blossom water. Pour a little bit of the syrup on top of the mhencha.
5- Let the mhencha cool down completely, cut it in small pieces, place in paper cups, and serve with Moroccan Mint Tea!