It was being pregnant cravings knafeh it made Sara Hammouda dream in chocolate, imagining a block that recalled the crunchy, creamy Center Jap dessert of her British-Egyptian childhood.
“I informed my husband the following day that I wished to begin a chocolate enterprise,” she mentioned from her dwelling in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
She had by no means made chocolate earlier than. However, undeterred and mid-pregnancy, she set to work from her lounge, with knafe components in thoughts (cream cheese or akavi cheese, shredded phyllo often known as kataifi, nuts or date syrup, and orange blossom or rose water) . In spite of everything, her “I can’t get Knafeh from him” bar was born, a milk chocolate shell flecked with pistachio and kataifi cream and embellished with vivid yellow and electrical inexperienced flecks.
Ms Hammouda had no thought it could take off in its personal proper, incomes the nickname “Dubai Chocolate” amongst followers on-line and spawning numerous copycats.
In truth, when the couple opened their on-line retailer in 2022. FIX Dessert Chocolatier — FIX, they mentioned, is brief for Freaking Unimaginable eXperience — “we have been promoting a couple of bar per week,” mentioned Yezen Alani, Ms. Hammouda’s husband.
Not one fashion of bar. A single bar.
“There have been so many days we wished to surrender,” Ms Hammouda mentioned.
Then he got here viral videos on TikTok.
After the couple reluctantly accepted a fan’s suggestion and despatched some chocolate bars to native influencers, Maria Vehera printed ASMR style TikTok exhibits off its fast shell and cascading pistachio cream, then takes an enormous, messy chunk.
That led to a waterfall of orders, Mr. Alani mentioned — at the least 30,000 when the supply app they have been utilizing crashed.
“It was like the scene in The Bearthe place tickets maintain coming in,” he mentioned.
Ms Hammouda mentioned: “I keep in mind throwing my cellphone on the street.”
Issues are higher now: The FIX staff has grown to 50. The tape has gained a world following. Lindt, the Swiss chocolatier, even create a version for a restricted version of 300 bars in December. (It bought out in a day.) And British supply app Deliveroo mentioned the Cannot Get Knafeh bar was the most-ordered merchandise globally final yr.
Whereas Ms. Hamouda and Mr. orange object to the numerous variations bought by large corporations, they like it when small companies and residential cooks “do their very own factor.”
Venessa Liang, an oncology pharmacist and chocolatier often known as FoodiePharmBabe on social media, bought her”The taste of Dubai” bar made with darkish chocolate coating, golden chocolate filling with pistachio cream, toasted turmeric kataifi and caramelized pistachios, for C$100 (about $70) per bar. They bought out in three to 5 minutes, she mentioned.
For Ms. Liang, the magic of Dubai chocolate lies in its crowd-pleasing core elements and their adaptability: She even makes use of them in homemade ice cream. “These scents simply work,” she mentioned.
The Cannot Get Knafeh bar might have energy over the remainder of the world, however Ms Hamouda says she’s already transferring on. This week, FIX is releasing a bar made with caramelized pecans and cookies: It is known as Catch Me If Pecan.
“The title is a bit cheeky,” she mentioned, including “it is like our method of claiming to the remainder of the chocolate world, ‘It’s best to meet up with us.’
