How Dubai Chocolate Took Over the World

Inspired by a beloved childhood dessert, the gooey, crunchy “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” chocolate bar is a global sensation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/dining/dubai-chocolate-cant-get-knafeh-it.html

https://archive.ph/F4tjw


Commonly known as Dubai chocolate, the “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” bar, created by the chocolatier Sarah Hamouda, has a milk chocolate shell bursting with pistachio cream and kataifi. This recipe lets you make it at home. Credit...Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Yossy Arefi.


It was a pregnancy craving for knafeh that got Sarah Hamouda dreaming in chocolate, imagining a bar that recalled the crunchy-creamy Middle Eastern dessert of her British Egyptian childhood. “I told my husband the next day that I wanted to start a chocolate business,” she said from her home in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

She’d never made chocolate before. But, undeterred and halfway through her pregnancy, she began working from her living room, with the elements of knafeh (cream or akkawi cheese, shredded phyllo known as kataifi, nuts or date syrup, and orange blossom or rose water) in mind. Eventually, her “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” bar was born, a milk chocolate shell bursting with pistachio cream and kataifi and adorned with bright yellow and electric green splotches.


Sarah Hamouda and Yezen Alani, the married couple behind the Can’t Get Knafeh chocolate bar, were taken aback by the demand for the bar and the emergence of dupes worldwide. Credit...Katarina Premfors for The New York Times

Mrs. Hamouda had no idea that it would take on a life of its own, earning the nickname “Dubai chocolate” among fans online and spurring countless imitations. In fact, when the couple opened their online shop in 2022, FIX Dessert Chocolatier — FIX, they said, stands for Freaking Incredible eXperience — “we were selling about a bar a week,” said Yezen Alani, Mrs. Hamouda’s husband. Not one style of bar. One single bar. “There were so many days we wanted to give up,” Mrs. Hamouda said.

Then came the viral TikTok video. After the couple reluctantly took a fan’s suggestion and sent some chocolate bars to local influencers, Maria Vehera posted an A.S.M.R.-style TikTok showing off its snappy shell and cascading pistachio cream, then taking a big, messy bite. It led to a waterfall of orders, Mr. Alani said — at least 30,000, which is when the delivery app they were using crashed.

snip