For many of us, holiday baking is among the happiest of our childhood memories, calling up festive aromas and flavors, and reminding us of pleasures shared with family and friends.

Whether you’re baking pumpkin pie, Chanukah sugar cookies or empanadas this season, chances are good that your recipes call for spices. The most common spices and ingredients used in holiday baking are cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, poppy seed and vanilla extract.

Chocolate, berries, oatmeal and candied fruit are also popular in American and European kitchens; today, we’d like to introduce our readers to some of the delicious desserts from the Mediterranean and Middle East.

In general, the preferred choice for dessert to the people of the region is a natural one: fragrant oranges and melons, grapes or dried fruit, dates or nuts. A proper meal must include at least seven principal dishes: meat, fish, rice or a legume and vegetables. The weather is very hot, so the meal traditionally ends with just a cup of Turkish coffee or tea.

Desserts are reserved for family festivities: weddings, henna ceremonies and major holidays, or for an occasional visit for a coffee. But in every home, you will always find jars filled with delicious pastry and cookies.

Many Middle Easterners place a heavy emphasis on hospitality, especially in the Arab community. It is considered impolite to refuse hospitality, whether it takes the form of a simple cup of Turkish coffee or a lavish meal.

When guests arrive, even for a short visit, they are served coffee and many sweet traditional pastries. The children of the house will often carry large silver trays filled with sweets and delicious desserts to offer the guests. 

You’ll recognize many of the most common baking spices: allspice, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Sesame seeds and nuts are also popular, including pine nuts, peanuts, almonds and pistachios, as are dried fruit, dates, semolina (farina), orange-flower water and rose water.

Orange flower water is a fragrant liquid distilled from orange blossoms and used to flavor syrups and pastries. Distilled from fragrant rose petals, rose water is used for both savory and sweet dishes.

Common desserts of the region include lokum, known in the West as Turkish delight. A confection made from starch and sugar, it is often flavored with rosewater and lemon, the former giving it a characteristic pale pink color. It has a soft, jelly-like and sometimes sticky consistency. Some types contain small nut pieces, usually pistachio or walnuts.

Rose petal jam is made from sugar, lemon, water, rose petals and rose water; kataifi is a shredded pastry filled with nuts and spices and drizzled with spiced honey syrup. To make kataifi, which looks rather like slightly soft vermicelli noodles, a dough, somewhat similar to phyllo dough, is forced through a finely perforated metal plate.

Semolina cake, made with ground almonds and flour from the starchy interior of durum wheat kernels, is drizzled with sugar lemon syrup.

The pastries of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan are renowned worldwide: Every large Western city now has a Lebanese or Syrian pastry shop, and they all serve baklava — a rich, sweet pastry featured in many cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire, made of layers of phyllo dough filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup or honey.

Other than fruit and phyllo desserts, the one commonly prepared by most Arab families is a milk-based pudding or custard. Additions may include rice or rice powder, almonds and pistachios, raisins and coconut, and the delicate scent of cinnamon, rosewater or cardamom.

Crème caramel is extremely popular with many families in the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. Muhallabia, an almond cream pudding, is popular in Lebanon and the neighbor countries.

Each of these puddings offers a subtle difference in texture and flavoring. The puddings are served in a bowl garnished with nuts and a drizzle of rose water syrup made from water, sugar, rose water, lemon juice and pink food coloring.

Date, Spice and Walnut Cake

1 pack (13 oz) pitted dates

2 cups boiling water

2 eggs

1/4 cup sugar*

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 stick of butter melted

3 cups of sifted flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. cardamon powder

1/2 tsp. cinnamon ground

1/8 tsp. cloves powder

1/4 tsp. nutmeg, ground

Pinch of salt

1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

* You can use less that a quarter cup of sugar if you wish, as the date mixture is very sweet.

Make a date molasses by cooking pitted dates in boiling water for about 20 minutes. Once the water has cooled, use a food processor or blender to break the dates into smaller pieces, but do not purée them.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour the baking pan.

Cream the eggs with sugar, vanilla and butter until smooth. Mix in the date mixture. On a low speed, beat in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and spices. Stir in the walnuts. Spread the batter in the prepared pan. Bake for about 40-50 minutes or until firm.

Ronit and Shuli Madmone are the owners of Whole Spice at the Oxbow Public Market in Napa. Their Web site is www.wholespice.com