The viral Knafeh-inspired Chocolate Bar has been all over my social feeds and I needed to make it and see what the hype was all about. Here is my version of it – I am going to call it the best Crunchy Pistachio Chocolate Bar. It is really nice. The textures are spot on, the pistachio flavours so good and the whole bar is just delicious.

Knafeh is a dessert that uses the crispy Kataifi pastry, sweet cheese and pistachio. This chocolate bar has the pastry and the pistachio but replaces the sweet cheese with chocolate. It sounds strange but trust me it is not.

What is Kataifi pastry

Kataifi or kadaifi is a pastry made of delicate, thin strands of filo dough. It is not the easiest to find and I was not prepared to spend a lot to buy it. I went with Vermicelli. Kataifi is made with strands of dough and has no distinct flavour. This recipe calls for it to be toasted to make it crunchy. The same can be done with Vermicelli, hence it being a good replacement.

How do you make the viral Dubai chocolate

The processes of making the viral Dubai chocolate are easy. Crisp your Vermicelli, temper your chocolate, make your filling, then fill the moulds. You just need to do it in stages so you have a nice chocolate mould. A warning from me – try and resist eating the crunchy pistachio filling because it is so nice. It is sweet and can be sickly but the texture and flavour combo is so good. Here is an amazon link with the moulds and ingredients.

Ingredients for kataifi pistachio chocolate bar

How to temper chocolate

I temper my chocolate using Bain-marie method. I do this by placing the chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a pan with hot water (not boiling). The bowl should not touch the water. I place this on low heat then let the chocolate melt (stirring occasionally). Once the chocolate has melted, take the bowl off the pan, add in the remaining chocolate and mix it until it is all melted. This is a quick method. I do not bother with checking the temperature. You can skip this part and just melt the chocolate. The end result will just be less shiny but the taste will be the same.

Tips on how to make the viral crunchy Dubai FIX pistachio chocolate bar

The filling is sweet and adding Tahini is essential to balance it out and give that creaminess too.
Using dark chocolate balances the sweetness of the filling. If you do not like dark chocolate, mix it like I have in the recipe
Setting the chocolate is key to ensure the chocolate does not melt. Be patient

Print Recipe

Pistachio Chocolate

The recipe for a crunchy chocolate – a Copy Cat Dubai FIX Pistachio Stuffed Chocolate bar

Prep Time10

Cook Time10

Combined Chilling Time2

Course: Dessert, Snack

Keyword: flavoured chocolate, pistachio, pistachio butter

Servings: 2 bars

Ingredients

1 tbsp butter
100 grams vermicelli
½ cup pistachio butter
50 ml tahini
125 g milk choc
25 g dark choc
25 g white chocolate
Green food colouring

Instructions

Melt the butter in a pan then add in the crushed vermicelli. Toast on low to medium heat for about 10 minutes until golden.
Let this cool then combine it with the pistachio butter and tahini to form your crunchy filling.
Melt your white chocolate in the microwave. Drizzle half of this on both your chocolate moulds. Now add in some green food colouring (one that is similar to the colour of pistachio) and drizzle that on the mould too. Place this in the freezer for at least 5 minutes whilst you temper the milk and dark chocolate. This step is to make the bar fancy – you can skip it all together if you just want a plain bar.
Temper the milk and dark chocolate. I mixed them both and left a bit of both aside to add on (see how to temper paragraph above). Let this cool but not harden. This should take about 10-15 minutes.
Take your moulds out the freezer and add on your cooled chocolate. Ensure you spread it on the sides too. You want enough chocolate to cover the mould but not fill it. Keep about a tsp of chocolate aside. Let this chocolate set in the fridge for 20-30 minutes.
Now add on the filling to one of the chocolate moulds. It depends on what sort of chocolate moulds you have. The one I had was cubed and putting the filling on both sides would make it tricky to close. Pile on more of the filling in the middle so when you close the moulds together the top half is filled well. These moulds are not that deep.
To stick the moulds together to form the chocolate bar, I used the melted chocolate leftover from earlier and spread it around the edges.
Next step is to close the mould and let this chill for at least an hour in the fridge. Check the mould peels off easily. If it does, the chocolate is good to go.
You can eat it straight out the fridge or let it get to room temperature.
I stored mine in the fridge. It should last a week.