Gibraltar’s diverse and eclectic culture enjoys a variety of food, some of those from jewish decent. As it’s almost passover, I was asked by a friend whether I had a recipe she was searching for lying around. Surprisingly I had this recipe, shared by a friend of mine, which I was looking forward to trying out.
It seems Bienmesabe has many routes and after a quick google search i found there are many variations, including South America. However, our recipe comes to us from a traditionally jewish recipe of Sephardic decent and is enjoyed throughout the Passover celebrations due to the fact that there’s no wheat.
Having never made this before it was quite the experiment but i’m happy with the results. How do you make yours? Do you have any stories relating to bienmesabe?
Watch us cook instead

Bienmesabe
Ingredients
- 250 g Ground Almonds
- 200 g Sugar
- 8 Egg Yolks
- 5 Tbsp Almond Liquor
- 175 G Sponge Fingers Wheat Free
- 300 ML Water
Meringue
- 4 Egg Whites
- 200 g Sugar
- Cinnamon
Instructions
- Prepare a syrup by heating up the water in a pan and dissolving the sugar.
- Now crush your biscuits in a bowl and add half the syrup and the liquor (Although the original recipe requested whiskey, I decided to replace this as I’m not a big fan). Mix this all together and set it aside.
- In the remaining syrup, add the ground almonds and the egg yolks and stir together over a medium heat until the mixture thickens.
- Place this to one side and in a clean bowl, beat the egg whites until they peak, then add in the sugar and continue to beat until this dissolves.
- In 6 small ramekins lay the mixture out as follows
- Biscuit mixture
- Almond mix
- Meringue
- Sprinkle with cinnamon and decorate with a few almond slices.
- Place these in the fridge and enjoy.
so smooth