The following is the traditional ma'amoul cookies recipe, adapted for widespread tastes, meaning the dough is made with a mix of semolina and wheat flour and is sweet. The ingredients and amounts for a date and walnut filling are included. You can double or halve the amounts depending on how much cookies you would like to make. Take note that if you’re using a nut filling, shape the cookies into oblongs, or into balls if you’re using a date filling. Also, you can choose whichever filling you would prefer, but in case you’d like to make ma’amouls with both fillings, you need to halve the amounts listed in the recipe.

The following recipe is the go-to traditional Lebanese ma'amoul cookies recipe. The dough is made with only semolina, ghee butter, and yeast, seasoned with rose water, mahlab, and orange blossom water. Ingredients and measurements for each of the three typical ma'amoul fillings — date, pistachio, and walnut — are given. The recipe makes 75 cookies, 25 per each filling. You can purchase ma’amoul molds in Middle Eastern supply stores or online.

Adapted from Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food, this is the recipe for Jewish ma’amouls which are made with flour only, no semolina as the case with Lebanese ma'amou. The cookies are shaped by hand and decorated with a fork or tweezers. Claudia Roden, an Egyptian-born British food writer, is known for introducing Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines to the Western world. Her most famous work, A Book of Middle Eastern Food (1968), helped popularize these cuisines through her blend of recipes and cultural history.

Often referred to as Aleppo cookies, these nut-filled cookies are a more refined version of ma'amoul. In Lebanon, they will have a pistachio filling, and in Syria a walnut one. They are typically served with natif, a dip/sauce made with soapwort root. The recipe is courtesy of Anissa Helou, a cookbook author, cook, and teacher who specializes in Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and North African cuisine.