Make a big bowl of sweet, date-filled sheer khurma for Eid breakfast — and beyond

Maybe having a big bowl of sheer khurma on the morning of Eid al-Fitr is already a cherished tradition for you, but if you’re looking for a recipe for the cardamom-scented vermicelli pudding, this one from Rawaan Alkhatib is worth a try. The cook, writer and artist says when she was growing up, this recipe from her mom was an essential part of “the best meal of the year.”

This easy breakfast, or dessert, is made with dates, just like all the recipes in Alkhatib’s new book, Hot Date!: Sweet & Savory Recipes Celebrating the Date, from Party Food to Everyday Feasts. 

Look for the drier ones labelled “chuara” or "kharak" at Indian grocery stores instead of the medjool or deglet nour types, Alkhatib told us. “It’s not the variety that matters, but the degree of dryness,” she said. 

For a dairy alternative, Alkhatib thinks a nut milk would bring out the “unctuous nuttiness” of the beloved dish. “I bet a pistachio milk base would be divine,” she said. And she recommends dried coconut flakes, ground pistachio or almonds, crumbled dried rose petals, or a few saffron threads to top it all off. 

The following excerpt appears exactly as written in the book. It has not been edited by the CBC.

Isphana’s Sheer Khurma

By Rawaan Alkhatib

When I was a child, the best meal of the year was breakfast on Eid al Fitr, the first daylight meal we could all share after a long month of Ramadan fasting. We would rush downstairs to snag a bowlful of my mother’s signature sweet sheer khurma, which she makes in enormous quantities. An assembly line of foil containers would cover all available counter space, waiting to be filled and distributed as a festive treat for the many households on my father’s side of the family.

Although my mother grew up eating sheer khurma in Bombay, India, the origins of this sweet are widespread — it emerged somewhere along the Silk Road and is now found across the subcontinent, including in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Its name is Persian — sheer for “milk” and khurma for “dates.” (As a side note, one of my favorite etymologies is seersucker: sheer for “milk” and shakar for “cream,” so milk and cream, for the alternating woven stripes.) Think of a very soupy rice pudding, then swap out the rice for vermicelli, crushed into short lengths, and add copious quantities of warm spices, nuts, and dried fruit, particularly kharak-style dried dates (see The Many Forms of the Date on page 30 for more on dried dates).

Per my mother, “Like biryani, each family has its own recipe for sheer khurma, passed down from one generation to the next. Besides the cardamom and saffron, people also use desiccated coconut, chironji [an almond-like seed], and rosewater as flavoring. Occasionally, I add soaked raisins as a garnish. As kids, we all loved sheer khurma, and since it was only cooked on the Eids in our household, it was something we all looked forward to enjoying during these festivities.

“I remember my grandmother making a special trip to the dried fruit store (nuts and dates were not available in regular stores in those days) to make sure all the ingredients were appropriately bought in time and in the right amounts to make the dish in a huge vessel. She personally supervised the cook to ensure it was made to her satisfaction. My cousins and I would watch the proceedings with great interest because we all just loved to eat it! On Eid mornings we would all enjoy a hot bowl of the dessert. My grandmother would keep the rest to serve to Eid visitors, but we kids all had our eyes on it and would look for an opportunity to grab more. I particularly savored the taste of it eaten cold the next day. I found it quite special!”

Ingredients

• 8 cups [1.9 L] whole milk
• 6 Tbsp (50 g) sugar
• 4 big pinches of saffron
• 3 tsp ground cardamom
• ½ cup [35 g] vermicelli, broken into small pieces
• 1 cup [120 g] blanched slivered almonds
• 1 cup [120 g] pistachios, slivered
• 1 cup [100 g] kharak (dried dates), soaked overnight and thinly sliced

Preparation

In a large saucepan or stock pot set over medium-high heat, bring the milk, sugar, saffron, and cardamom to a boil. Turn the heat to low, then stir in the vermicelli and simmer until cooked through, 6 to 7 minutes. Add the almonds, pistachios, and dried dates and cook until the milk is slightly thickened, 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and let rest for about 20 minutes to let the flavors marry. Serve hot.

Leftovers can be stored in an airtight container and refrigerated for up to 5 days and served cold; much like next-day pizza or kunafa, I find it makes a very decadent breakfast straight from the refrigerator, particularly when Eid falls during the summertime.

Makes enough for 6, with leftovers

Excerpted from Hot Date: Sweet & Savory Recipes Celebrating the Date, From Party Food to Everyday Feasts by Rawaan Alkhatib, © 2025. Published by Chronicle Books. Photographs © Linda Xiao.