The wait is over – almond cookies are here ! Lavinia, Willa, Ryosuke and I had our baking class this afternoon. If you didn’t read my previous post, this was to be a class for both, the women who started the cooperative and us. We learn how to bake real  Moroccan cookies, they learn to provide baking classes to tourists or foreign women so they can expand their offerings and make more money at no marginal cost, so pure profit. We wanted to do a test as to how it would work, so the 3 of us were the guinea pigs and Ryo was the photographer (we will make a basic brochure for them).

It worked out great even though they spoke no English and we spoke no Arabic – there was some basic French but mostly lots of smiles, hand gestures and pointing. The recipe turned out to be for flourless almond cookies – I got so excited that they can target gluten free customers (clearly a 1st world problem as they had no idea what I was talking about) Didn’t matter to me, the more marketing angles, the better. Our focus was on making it a real Moroccan experience for the tourists so tried to give them advice on the cultural pieces that are unique and people enjoy – putting on headscarf as you walk in, putting on the leather shoes they wear here, having Arabic music in the background, having the story of their business written down, their names to make it personable, mint tea to get through the oven time and some pre-done cookies ready so they can sell more. Willa suggested a picture story to show them the steps and a little language leaflet for basic phrases.

PROCESS

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45 mins later – I really hope we helped them get the idea started. For the real foodies/no sugar folks, I am pretty sure you can swap the refined sugar for other raw sugar types. I loved their excitement and generous hunger for learning something new – but they were very timid to ask for any money or didn’t know how they would market this service or even price it; they also don’t want to take any pictures. Did you notice the size of the almond grinder? I don’t grind almonds much but have a bigger machine at home (significantly underutilized). And they do mass production with that little thing. Hopefully, with the pictures we took, we can put together a little brochure, pamphlet, distribution and make this THE baking school for tourists in Tangier.

If you were a tourist, would you go and learn how to make cookies with them? What would make it a fabulous, authentic experience for you? How much would you pay for it? #ibmcsc