Shekerbura


, is an Azerbaijani dessert.
It is a sweet pastry in half-moon shape, filled with ground almonds, hazelnuts, or walnuts, and sugar. Shekerbura, shorgoghal, and pakhlava are all eaten in Azerbaijan mainly at the Novruz spring holiday.

Name and meaning

The ancient name for this crescent-shaped pastry is sheker burek, a Turkic word literally meaning ‘sweet patty’ or "sweet pie". In Azerbaijan, it usually involves teamwork of relatives, friends and neighbors who congregate at someone’s home to make this Nowruz delight. Like other pastries prepared for Nowruz, shekerbura also has a symbolic meaning which denotes the half-moon or flame of fire.

Preparation

The dough is made of wheat flour, butter, milk, egg yolks, cream and yeast. The filling is prepared from peeled almond or fried nuts mixed with sugar powder. It also includes cardamom to flavor the pastry.
The dough is rolled and cut into small round shapes, then filled with stuffing and closed up by making a pattern of stitches. The stitching pattern on the dough is produced using traditional tweezers called maggash.