Macroute

1. Stage

Mix in a bowl of semolina, flour and a pinch of salt.

2. Stage

Melt the butter and rub it into the grits with your fingers. You will get crumbs like this. Cover the bowl with a lid or cling film to prevent the contents from getting stale, and leave it for an hour.

3. Stage

A few words about orange water, or rather, water infused with orange blossoms. Orange blossoms have a divine scent, and in Morocco (and I suspect not only there) they infuse plain water with orange blossoms. I use it not only in baking, most often I make a compress on my head for migraines, relieves the headache in 10 minutes. I have a strong suspicion that you don't have such water, but that's okay - just add vanilla, almond or any other flavoring to the water. Here, just in case, I took a picture of the bottle... what if you're going to Africa one of these days? You should definitely buy it, it costs mere pennies - you'll forget about migraine pills.

4. Stage

An hour has passed, the semolina has swollen a little, add the orange-flower water (or other flavored water) and stir it in, gathering the dough into a lump. It will be very, very soft. Cover the dough again with a lid and forget about it for an hour.

5. Stage

You won't have to be bored during this time, unless you have almond flour ready. So, if instead of flour you have almonds, pour boiling water on them, and after 10 minutes the skins will be easily removed. Now mix the almonds, cinnamon and sugar and blend everything in a food processor until the mixture starts to collect at the edges of the bowl. Now add 1.5 tbsp of orange water (flavored water) and 1 tbsp of melted butter to the almond paste. Since I had ready-made flour and the mass was a little dry, I had to add another half tbsp of water and butter.

6. Stage

The almond paste should eventually stick together into a lump like this.

7. Stage

Prepare the honey mixture in which you will dip the finished hot cookies - melt honey in a water bath and add 1 tbsp of orange-colored water. The honey should become quite liquid.

8. Stage

Divide the almond paste and batter into equal parts.

9. Stage

Roll a sausage from the dough, make a shallow groove with your finger. From the almond paste also roll a blank equal in length to the blank of semolina dough.

10. Stage

It's all clear, I don't have to explain it.

11. Stage

Roll the sausage back and forth a few times, sealing the dough around the almond filling. With the back of a knife, draw a pattern (you can skip this step, it's just for beauty, it doesn't play any important role)

12. Stage

Cut the sausages with a sawing (not pressing!) motion at an angle into small pieces. Do the same with the remaining six pieces of dough and almond paste. After I sliced the first sausage, I started deep frying it, and I rolled and cut the rest while the previous ones were frying. But if you are afraid of not calculating your strength, it is better to prepare everything in advance.

13. Stage

So, prepare everything for the last step - frying the cookies in vegetable oil and soaking them in honey syrup. Pour the vegetable oil in a saucepan with a thick bottom and put it on medium heat. Next to the pan, place the prepared warm liquid honey-orange syrup, and you need a colander or sieve to put the soaked in syrup cookies on it. The sieve can be placed on another pan, or it can be placed on the pan with the syrup, so that the syrup drips from the cookies back into the same pan. Once the oil is hot, throw the first batch of cookies, fry until a beautiful golden color, remove with a slotted spoon, wait a little while the oil runs off and then drop them into the syrup for 3-5 minutes, the time depends only on your wish. If they stay longer, they will be more saturated with honey. Then transfer the soaked in honey cookies to a colander, let the excess syrup drain off. Finished cookies can be sprinkled with orange zest, sesame seeds or coconut.