Souq Al Arsah Sweet Shop · Starch Confection

Emirati Halwa

📷 Closely related photo — Photo: Slywire / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

It's stirred by hand in a wide copper pot for well over an hour, non-stop, until the mixture turns from cloudy liquid into a glossy, jelly-like block — stop stirring too soon and it never sets.

Halwa is a dense, glossy sweet made by cooking cornstarch, sugar, ghee, and rosewater together over low heat until thick and translucent, then studding it with saffron threads and crushed nuts. Sharjah's Souq Al Arsah, one of the UAE's oldest markets, still has a dedicated halwa shop that ladles it out warm to visitors.

Why it's made this way: The same starch-and-sugar confection is made across the Gulf, but Souq Al Arsah's nearly two-century-old trading history — once a meeting point for Persian, Indian, and Bedouin merchants — kept the hand-stirred version alive as a snack specific to Sharjah's old town.