View our 2022 Menu Here or with the QR code below.
You will also be able to use these links to order your own food during the Festival weekend.
Sweets
We make approximately 12,000 pieces of sweets each year! Take a look at the amazing variety and get excited for our next big sale.
The traditional Greek baklaVa uses a honey-based syrup, while the Middle Eastern baklaWa recipe calls for a simple syrup mixture scented with orange blossom and rose waters. It's important to pour the syrup on as soon as the tray comes out of the oven so that it can be fully absorbed.
Phyllo dough, butter, sugar, water, hazelnuts and lemon juice -- combined wtih some pastry making skills -- are all that are required to make a delicious tray of hazelnut baklawa.
Parishioner Heidi, who coordinates volunteerism for our Christmas sweets sale, is thrilled to show customers the extensive variety of sweets to choose from!
Nikki fills a LARGE box of sweets for a festival customer!
Festival Sweets Chair Samira proudly holds a tray of maamoul as the festival gets started. She is extremely grateful for the support of her fellow parishioners who worked diligently over the prior weeks to hand make thousands of sweets for sale over the Labor Day weekend event.
Trays and trays of Arabic sweets to whet your appetite!
That smile on Lani's face says it all: "We are ready to serve our wonderful vistors!"
Vivian prepares the Atayef pancakes on the portable griddles. Soon they'll be stuffed with a delicious pistachio mixture and rose-water simple syrup.
Nikki and Katrina, both outstanding cooks and bakers, pose in front of the extensive sweets table.
Janet and Ghada fill the Atayef with the pistachio mixture.
Emily, food festival volunteer coordinator (and part of the virtual festival committee!), helps a visitor decide which types of baklawa to take home in a box.
Have we mentioned that we prepare 12,000 pieces of sweets to be sold over the Sat & Sun event? Here's an up close look at the 30-foot table filled with delicious sweets. We constantly replenish until it's all sold out!
Vivan and Bassima make the mix ready for the Atayef, which are Middle Eastern pancakes stuffed with ricotta cream, sprinkled with crushed pistachios and served with a rose-water simple syrup.
Samira, Mary B. and Margaret show off some delicious chocolate covered almonds, cashews and other nut clusters. (We'd call those American sweets!)
Samira, the longtime chair of the festival sweets sale, spreads walnuts on buttered phyllo dough for the walnut baklawa roll.
This Graybeh cookie holds a pistachio nut in the center, giving the cookie a nice crunch.
These Graybeh "S" cookies baked by parishioner Mary Z. are made with butter and powdered sugar and absolutely melt in your mouth.
Once the anise cookies are baked, they are soaked in syrup for full flavor!
These anise cookies are ready for the oven and are a fan favorite!
An almond coconut turban cookie is painted with butter -- yes, we just use regular (sanitized) paint brushes from the hardware store!
Love chocolate? Don't miss these chocolate hazelnut bird's nest cookies the next time you're at our Middle Eastern Food Festival.
Feast your eyes on those bird's nests, which Lani describes as the "flippy" ones. Rather than use a dowel to make these, we make them a little more carefree and then flip them over to be stuffed with walnuts!
It takes great precision to measure and cut the phyllo dough. Thank goodness for a ruler and a sharp knife!
At our sweets table you can buy individual pastries or a full box "to go." In this box we are packing up the walnut maamoul that we've just sprinkled with powdered sugar.
A true work of art! A full tray of walnut maamoul shaped into roses by parishioner Carole Miller.
Ordinarily we use molds to create beautiful designs for our cookies, but parishioner Carole originated a beautiful flower design on this dough for the walnut maamoul.
Who says tortilla presses don't have multiple uses? Our sweets committee members have begun to use that great tool to streamline their process in making nut maamoul.
Can't forget the powdered sugar on those pistachio maamoul cookies. Yum!
Here is the gorgeous, finished product: Pistachio Maamoul!
Once the pistachio maamoul has been filled, we use a wooden mold to shape it into a pretty design.
The pistachio maamoul is one of our more complicated cookies to make. The dough is made with semolina (not flour), rose water and sugar. Making it requires mixing the dough with butter the evening before and letting it sit overnight.
Mary lines the parchment paper with date maamoul.
Don't you just want to reach into this photo and grab a few of those beautiful date maamoul cookies? They're a top seller at the festival.
Our jars of clarified butter need to cool before we can put the lids back on.
We at Holy T have become experts in organizing our sweets before they hit the 30-foot table on the Saturday morning of the Middle Eastern Food Festival!
Would you believe it takes 275 pounds of butter to make all of the sweets for the festival? We start by clarifying the butter, a very important part of the process.
Leila uses a dowel to roll the phyllo dough for the bird's nest. Naturally that requires a brush of melted butter with every turn!
George fills the bird's nests with pistachio nuts.
Sam was an "honorary" member of the Ladies Guild and loyal supporter of the church who could be counted on to help with any project. In this photo he is preparing the simple syrup for the baklawa.
A favorite cookie to make is the Pistachio Bird's Nest Baklawa, which takes a lot of practice! It requires the use of a dowel to roll the dough tightly in order to shape it into a nest. We're always grateful to have a large turnout for this activity.
"Teta" is grandmother in Arabic, and here, sporting her "Chez Teta" apron, is Mary, mother to 9, grandmother to 28, and longtime leader of the date maamoul cookie baking at Holy Transfiguration Church.
Khourieh Judy, the wife of our priest Fr. Ephrem, forms small balls with the maamoul dough, which will be subsequently flattened and shaped.
Once the date maamoul is shaped into a cylinder, it gets pinched into a beautiful design.
Ladies of the parish enjoy their together time as they make date maamoul, a shortbread cookie stuffed with dates.
Lani, a longtime parishioner and volunteer coordinator extraordinaire, shapes a Bird's Nest Baklawa that soon will be filled with pistachio nuts.
The Middle Eastern Food Festival is our top fundraiser of the year. Proceeds support our yearly operations, religious education, and charitable endeavors. If interested in making a 100% tax deductible donation, please click on the button below.