How Dubai Chocolate Took Over the World
The New York Times
Inspired by a beloved childhood dessert, the gooey, crunchy “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” chocolate bar is a global sensation.
It was a pregnancy craving for knafeh that got Sarah Hamouda dreaming in chocolate, imagining a bar that recalled the crunchy-creamy Middle Eastern dessert of her British Egyptian childhood.
“I told my husband the next day that I wanted to start a chocolate business,” she said from her home in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
She’d never made chocolate before. But, undeterred and halfway through her pregnancy, she began working from her living room, with the elements of knafeh (cream or akkawi cheese, shredded phyllo known as kataifi, nuts or date syrup, and orange blossom or rose water) in mind. Eventually, her “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” bar was born, a milk chocolate shell bursting with pistachio cream and kataifi and adorned with bright yellow and electric green splotches.
