Maltese Recipes: Qaghaq tal-Gunglien

When I miss Malta, one way of feeling closer to Malta and its people for me, is not through a telephone call or a chat conversation, but through cooking a maltese dish. As such, I thought I'd share a recipe with you all.

One of my favourite tea-time biscuits coming from Malta are 'Qaghaq tal-Gunglien', which translates to Sesame Seeds Ring Biscuits.

Please find below the ingredients you require, the recipe itself and also photos I have taken whilst cooking these biscuits:

- 500g Plain flour
- 200g Castor sugar
- 200g margarine (ideally, no trans-fat)
- 1 x 11g packet dried yeast
- ½ tsp aniseed
- ½ tsp ground cloves
- 1 tsp vanilla (ideally, poweder)
- Grated zest of 1 lemon lemon
- 180ml luke warm water
- Lots of Sesame Seeds

Put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and sift.
Mix into it the lemon zest.
Using your fingertips, rub into the mixture the margarine, until the mixture looks sandy.
Add the water a little at a time, until the mixture is turned into a dough.

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Leave the dough to rest for more than 2 hours. Ovenight rest is ideal.

Close view to the pastry.

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Flour the table top you will be using, and take the dough out of the bowl.
Cut a small piece of the pastry and roll it onto the flour, to form a long pipe.
Cut and twist the pipe around to create a ring and place it on a baking tray.

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Once you have used all the pastry, leave them to rest for yet another hour.
The rings might puff up and end up touching each other. Nothing to worry about here.

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Brush up the top of each ring with water and sprinkle the sesame seeds on top.
Preheat the over at 160C and then bake the rings for not more than 15minuted.
You will know they're down once the rings are brown on top, yet still rather soft  when you touch them.

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The finishing should look like this:

If you skip the 1 hour waiting time before putting them in the oven, the biscuits look like this:

Either way... they are very tasty.

Store in an air-tight containter and consume within 2-5 days.