Mahlab

Of all the ingredients in this book, mahlab may be the least familiar to you, but I hope I can make the case for adding it to your sweets and baking pantry. It has a delicate cherry flavor with notes of bitter almond—not surprising, since it is made from the tiny dried kernel of the St. Lucie cherry, a fruit variety that grows around the Mediterranean. To get at the kernels, the cherry pits must be cracked open, and the moist kernels are then dried to a buckshot hardness. When ground, the kernels become very powdery and easy to incorporate into any number of recipes. In Greece, mahlab is an essential ingredient for tsoureki, the Easter sweet bread, and Lebanese families give out little yeast-raised donuts made with mahlab for the holiday; my cousin still makes hundreds every year! And it is what gives stretchy Syrian ice cream its distinctive flavor.