Cashew Ghoriba Biscuits: Easy Tunisian Almond Cookies (No Flour)
Cashew ghoriba are flourless Tunisian cookies made with ground cashews, egg yolk, and orange blossom water. One bowl, one almond, no mixer needed — see the full method.
Cashew ghoriba are Tunisian nut-based cookies, made with ground cashews, egg yolk, and sugar in place of any flour, then finished with a single almond pressed into the center before baking. They belong to the same family of North African sweets served at celebrations and alongside mint tea, and their appeal has always been in that contrast: a crackled, sugar-dusted shell giving way to a dense, almost marzipan-like interior. There’s no butter to cream and no dough to rest, which makes this one of those rare desserts where the ingredient list is short but the payoff still feels considered. One thing worth knowing before you start: these bake fast and burn faster, since there’s no flour in the mix to slow things down, so the last few minutes in the oven deserve your full attention rather than a quick glance from across the kitchen. Once you’ve made them straight, you’ll likely find yourself wondering how far this simple base can actually stretch.
— Chef Pepper Sage
Cashew Ghoriba Biscuits (Tunisian Almond-Studded Cookies)
There’s a particular kind of cookie that shows up at celebrations across North Africa wearing a dozen different names and just as many disguises — sometimes it’s built on almonds, sometimes semolina, sometimes (as here) cashews — but it’s almost always rolled in a soft blizzard of powdered sugar and served alongside a glass of mint tea. That’s ghoriba, and the Tunisian cashew version is one of the more elegant members of the family: dense, faintly nutty, perfumed with orange blossom water, and finished with a single almond pressed into the top like a little crown.
It’s a strange and wonderful thing that a cookie can taste this refined with just six ingredients and no flour whatsoever. There’s no butter to cream, no leavening to fuss over — just ground cashews, sugar, egg yolk, and orange blossom water, worked into a paste and shaped by hand. That simplicity is exactly why it rewards a little extra attention to detail, which is the whole idea behind Classic Recipes, Reimagined: take something that already works, and make sure every step of it makes sense to you before you start.
A quick note on orange blossom water, since it’s the ingredient most likely to send you on a scavenger hunt through your pantry: it’s a staple in Middle Eastern and North African baking, made by distilling bitter orange blossoms, and it shows up constantly in cookies just like this one. If your grocery store doesn’t carry it, Middle Eastern markets almost always will, and rose water makes a perfectly reasonable substitute if you’re after a similar floral note rather than an exact match.
Ingredients
For the dough:
- 8¾ oz (250 g) raw cashews, finely ground
- ½ cup (100 g) powdered sugar, plus extra for rolling and dusting
- 2 large egg yolks
- 2 tablespoons orange blossom water
For finishing:
- About 3½ oz (100 g) whole almonds (one per cookie, for pressing into the centers)
Instructions
- Get your oven and tray ready. Preheat to 350°F (180°C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Build the dough. In a mixing bowl, stir the ground cashews together with the powdered sugar until evenly combined. Add the egg yolks and orange blossom water, then mix until you have a smooth, cohesive paste — it should hold together easily without being sticky or wet.
- Shape the cookies. Pinch off small portions of the dough and roll them between your palms into balls roughly the size of a walnut. Aim for consistency here; it’ll help everything bake evenly.
- Coat and arrange. Roll each ball in powdered sugar until fully covered, then set it on the prepared baking sheet, leaving a little breathing room between cookies.
- Add the almond. Press a single whole almond into the center of each ball, flattening it slightly as you go — this is the detail that makes them instantly recognizable as ghoriba.
- Bake and watch closely. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the cookies have turned a light golden color. These go from perfectly baked to over-browned faster than you’d expect, since there’s no flour to buffer the sugar’s tendency to caramelize, so check in around the 15-minute mark and don’t wander too far from the kitchen.
- Cool completely before handling. Let them rest on the tray for a few minutes, then move to a wire rack. They firm up considerably as they cool, so resist the urge to test one straight out of the oven.
Pepper’s Notes
If your dough feels too soft to shape, pop it in the fridge for 15–20 minutes before rolling. Nut-based doughs like this one can vary in stiffness depending on how finely (and how oily) your cashews grind, and a short chill makes the shaping step far less messy.
Storage-wise, these hold up nicely. Kept in an airtight container at room temperature, similar egg-and-nut cookies in this family generally stay good for several days to about two weeks — just keep them away from humidity, since the sugar coating is the first thing to go if there’s moisture in the air.
No orange blossom water on hand? Rose water is the traditional stand-in across North African and Middle Eastern baking, and it’ll get you into roughly the same aromatic neighborhood. In a pinch, even a bit of orange zest can nudge the flavor in the right direction, though it won’t be a one-to-one swap.
One last thought: don’t be surprised if the tops crack slightly as they bake. That’s not a sign of a mistake — cracked, sugar-dusted tops are practically the signature of ghoriba across every version of this cookie, cashew or otherwise.
A Master Twist
Tunisian cashew ghoriba play it cool on paper — five ingredients, no flour, no chilling, no drama — but that simplicity is exactly why a few smart interventions can turn a lovely tea-time cookie into something a guest asks to take a photo of before eating. Here are three ways to push this one further, each preserving the flourless, egg-yolk-bound heart of the original while messing (respectfully) with everything around it.
The Noisette Detour
Ghoriba dough gets its richness entirely from the fat in the cashews themselves, which is elegant but also means there’s an obvious lever nobody’s pulling: browned butter. Swap one tablespoon of the powdered sugar for one tablespoon of cooled, solidified brown butter worked into the paste along with the egg yolks, and you’re layering a toasty, caramelized note underneath the orange blossom instead of leaving the flavor entirely to the nuts and the floral water. The reason this works is basic Maillard chemistry — browning butter cooks off roughly 15 to 20 percent of its water content while the milk solids toast, which is what generates those deep nutty, caramel-like flavor compounds in the first place, rather than the flat, one-note richness of plain melted fat.
Chef’s Intel: Because this dough has no flour to absorb excess moisture, use the butter cold and solid, not warm — warm brown butter will loosen the paste past the point of holding a shape, and you’ll be chasing it around the tray with a spatula.
Watch for: Don’t skip letting the butter fully re-solidify in the fridge first. Rushing this step is the single most common way home cooks end up with ghoriba that spread into puddles instead of holding their signature rounded shape.
The Chickpea Standby
If you bake for anyone who avoids eggs, this is the version worth keeping in your back pocket, because ghoriba dough is unusually well-suited to it — there’s no leavening to worry about disrupting, just a binder holding ground nuts and sugar together. Replace the two egg yolks with two tablespoons of unwhipped aquafaba (straight from a can of chickpeas, no whipping required for this application) plus one teaspoon of neutral oil to make up for the fat you’re losing. The ratio matters more than people assume: most baking guides land on roughly one tablespoon of aquafaba per egg yolk, with a little extra fat folded in separately, since aquafaba brings binding power but essentially none of the richness a yolk normally supplies.
Chef’s Intel: Aquafaba lacks a yolk’s emulsifying fat, so the dough will feel slightly looser and tackier as you shape it — that’s expected, not a sign something’s gone wrong.
Watch for: Resist adding more aquafaba to compensate for a dry-feeling dough. Too much extra liquid without the matching fat just makes the cookies spread thin and lose that dense, chewy bite that makes ghoriba what it is. A short 15-minute chill fixes stickiness far better than more liquid does.
The Halva Line
This is the one that leans hardest into where ghoriba actually sits — geographically and flavor-wise — right in the same Mediterranean pantry as tahini, halva, and dark chocolate. Swirl one tablespoon of tahini into the cashew paste before shaping (it plays beautifully with the orange blossom rather than fighting it), then, once the cookies have cooled completely, dip half of each one in dark chocolate you’ve warmed through with a pinch of the same spice blend you’d reach for in a mole or a coffee-forward dry rub. Tahini folded into sweets alongside orange blossom or rosewater isn’t a stretch invention on my part — it’s a pairing that shows up constantly in contemporary halva riffs, where sesame’s bitterness is used deliberately to cut floral sweetness rather than compete with it.
Chef’s Intel: Temper your chocolate, even informally — a quick stir over a double boiler until just melted, no higher — because a cookie this delicate doesn’t need a thick, seized chocolate shell weighing it down.
Watch for: Go easy on the tahini. A full tablespoon per batch is plenty; sesame paste is assertive, and this variation is meant to complicate the orange blossom, not replace it.
Whichever direction you take it, the cashew stays ground, the orange blossom stays non-negotiable, and that single almond still gets pressed into the center — some things about a ghoriba you just don’t touch.
A cookie built on ground nuts and egg yolk has no business tasting this composed, and yet here we are — proof that the best culinary flexes are sometimes the ones with the shortest ingredient lists.
— Chef Pepper Sage
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I substitute the cashews with a different nut?
Yes — ghoriba are made across North Africa with all kinds of ground nuts, so almonds or walnuts will work in the same quantity as a straight swap. Keep in mind the flavor and color will shift slightly (almonds bake up a bit paler and less rich than cashews), so this is really a “different but equally traditional” cookie rather than an exact copy.
Can I freeze the dough or the baked cookies?
Both freeze well. Shape the dough into balls, coat them in powdered sugar, and freeze on a tray before transferring to a bag — bake straight from frozen, adding a couple of extra minutes. Already-baked cookies also hold up in the freezer for a couple of months; just thaw them sealed at room temperature so condensation doesn’t ruin the sugar coating.
Mine didn’t crack on top — did I do something wrong?
Not necessarily wrong, just not ideal: a lack of cracking usually comes down to an oven that’s running cooler than it should, dough that’s been overworked past the point of being pliable, or skipping a heavy, even coat of powdered sugar before baking. A thick sugar coating on a properly firm dough is what gives that signature crackled surface as it bakes.
What’s traditionally served alongside ghoriba?
Mint tea is the classic pairing across the Maghreb, and it’s not just tradition for tradition’s sake — the tea’s bitterness and heat cut through the cookie’s sweetness and richness nicely. A small cup of strong coffee works for the same reason if tea isn’t your thing.
Why doesn’t this recipe use any flour?
That’s not a shortcut, it’s the whole point: ghoriba in this style are built entirely around ground nuts, sugar, and egg as a structural trio, which is exactly what gives them that dense, almost marzipan-like interior instead of the lighter crumb you’d get from a flour-based cookie. It’s also why the recipe can go from “no butter to cream” to “in the oven” in one bowl, with nothing to rest or proof.
