What Moroccan sweets and pastries should I try?

Moroccan sweets are an art form, and they're built around almonds, honey, sesame, orange-blossom water and warm spice rather than heavy chocolate. The showpiece is kaab el ghzal — "gazelle horns" — delicate crescent pastries filled with a fragrant almond-and-orange-blossom paste, the kind of refined little treat you're served with mint tea when someone wants to impress you. They're elegant, not too sweet, and dangerously easy to keep eating.

Then there's the honey family, which is where Moroccan sweets get gloriously sticky. Chebakia are flower-shaped pieces of dough, fried crisp and bathed in honey then rolled in sesame seeds — the essential Ramadan sweet, eaten with harira. Briouats are little filo triangles or cigars stuffed with almond paste, fried and dipped in honey. Both shatter and ooze in the best way. M'hencha, the "snake cake," coils almond-filled pastry into a spiral dusted with sugar and cinnamon. And ghriba are Morocco's crumbly shortbread cookies — almond, sesame, or coconut — that dissolve into sand on your tongue.

Some sweets are less famous abroad but worth seeking out. Sellou (also called sfouf) is an unbaked, nutty, almost fudgy mixture of toasted flour, ground almonds, sesame and honey, eaten by the spoonful for energy — a traditional gift after childbirth and a Ramadan staple. The dessert pastillas — sweet milk pastilla layered with almond cream and orange-blossom — bridge pastry and pudding. And for something simpler, a dish of dates stuffed with marzipan, or fresh seasonal fruit, often closes a Moroccan meal more often than a heavy dessert.

Where to find the best: traditional pâtisseries in Fes and Marrakech display these like jewels, and a box of mixed Moroccan pastries makes a beautiful gift to bring home (they travel well). They reach their most spectacular during Ramadan, Eid and weddings, when families bake for days. My favourite way to enjoy them, though, is the everyday one — a small plate of assorted sweets set beside a pot of mint tea in the afternoon, which is less a snack than a ritual of Moroccan hospitality. Accept the invitation every time.