One Brother and Two Sisters: Dubai Chocolate Bar

It's funny how food has trends that come and go. Recently, Dubai chocolate has been HUGE... not to mention expensive! What is it? Basically, think of peanut butter, only instead, make it out of pistachios. Then, mix that pistachio butter (or pistachio cream) with toasted, crispy shreds of phyllo pastry (for a bit of crunch). These toasted pastry shreds are called kadayif or kataifi. The pistachio cream and kataifi mixed together are your creamy/crunchy filling. Surround that in chocolate to make a candy bar and you have a version of Dubai chocolate.

Because it can be hard to find and often very pricey, I decided to buy a chocolate bar mold and make some myself. If you use premade kataifi and jarred pistachio cream (you can find at Walmart), it actually was really, really easy. Enjoy!

Dubai Chocolate Bar

Ingredients:

kataifi
pistachio cream
chocolate melting wafers

Directions:

To make six bars that are about 4.5 x 2 x .5 inches, you will need about 15 oz. of melting chocolate, one small jar of pistachio cream (maybe 8-12 oz or so) and about 1 cup of kataifi. However, you can adjust proportions to your liking. This is just how I did it. Links and such for products below.

Place your molds on a baking sheet for easy transfer to the fridge once filled.
Melt your chocolate (I did mine in the microwave per the package instructions... 30 seconds, stir, then 15 seconds, stir, and keep going in 15 second intervals until melted).
Place about 1 1/2 Tbl of chocolate into the bottom and up the sides of each of your bar molds (or enough chocolate to make a thin, yet even and complete layer of chocolate. Place molds in fridge or freezer until firm.
Mix together your pistachio cream with your desired amount of kataifi. Place a layer of filling over the firm bottom chocolate layer, being careful to leave a gap edge around the filling so that chocolate can filling in down the sides of the bar in the next step. Smooth and even things as best you can. Place in fridge or freezer to firm.
Reheat your chocolate if needed and fill in the rest of the mold up to the top with chocolate. Place back in fridge or freezer until set.

Marsha's Notes:

If your pistachio cream has separated from the oil just a bit, that's okay. Just scrape it out into a bowl and whisk it back together. Then stir in your kataifi.

My jar was separated.

Fixed!

It's hard to see because the mold is also brown, but I used this Tbl measuring spoon to put a layer of chocolate in the bottom of each compartment of my mold. It took about 1 1/2 Tbl per compartment for my smaller chocolate bar mold.

I probably should have taken a picture after I put the filling in, and then a picture once I put the last layer of chocolate on. Oh well.. Here are the bars done. You can see that some of the filling touched the edge of the mold, blocking the chocolate from making a perfect seal, but I can watch for that and be more careful next time. Still tastes delicious!
Update: The next time I made these, I was sure to use a spoon to put at least a small layer of chocolate up the sides of the mold when covering the bottom. I let that harden and then added my filling and topped with more chocolate. I still tried to keep a tiny gap between the filling and the sides of the mold, but having the layer already up the sides made for a much cleaner finished result. See image below.
Also, be sure to jiggle your mold or knock it on the counter a few times after you put the last layer of chocolate on to release any trapped air bubbles.

This is my second attempt at these bars, and you can see the cleaner result from when I was putting chocolate in the bottom of the mold, I also took a spoon and pushed the chocolate up the sides of the mold to create a clean layer before adding the filling. This is also my new, bigger mold that makes more of a king-sized or family-sized bar.

You can buy a larger mold from Amazon using this link: https://a.co/d/04nPsw4a You can get a better idea of the size of the mold from the picture below.