Good news for dessert enthusiasts everywhere: 4 September is Eat an Extra Dessert Day. The unofficial holiday is best celebrated in Egypt, a country known for its wide array of decadently sweet oriental desserts such as basbousa, kunafa, and loqmet el qadi. One of the nation’s most popular desserts is Egyptian bread pudding Om Ali, which literally translates to ‘Ali’s mother.’ The dessert is usually made with puff pastry (or phyllo dough) and milk and nuts and is a common staple in the open buffet of any Egyptian hotel. Any fan of this Egyptian dessert would describe it as a comfort food; the warmth of the milk coupled with the nutty flavor results in a crowd favorite that’s most popular during the winter months. It is natural to assume that such a loved dessert would have a beautiful and heartwarming origin story, but the speculation is that the Om Ali so many Egyptians enjoy every day was actually motivated by bloody tales of revenge and victory. The most famous account of how this dessert came to be is that during the Mamluk era and before the Ottoman rule in Egypt,…
