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Epicurious

Harist Il Louz (Cream of Wheat Cake)

Cream of Wheat cake with slivered almonds on three plates.
Photo by Jennifer Chase

This is the dessert that I most associate with my childhood. Our aunt Gracie brought it whenever she visited, and I loved it so much that we asked her for the recipe. Eventually I took to baking it myself whenever I could, making it one of the very few things that I made as a young person that wasn’t directly from my mom or dad’s repertoire. In fact, it wasn’t even a family recipe. Though we regarded Gracie as one of our many aunties, my cousin Rachel and I didn’t realize until high school that she was actually a very dear friend of our great-aunt Babe, not a blood relative. It cracks me up and warms my heart to think about how as children we never questioned that everyone who was at all of our holiday gatherings was family.

This recipe was excerpted from ‘Maydān' by Rose Previte with Marah Stets, one of our top cookbooks of 2023. Buy the full book on Amazon.

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