Dubai Chocolate Covered Strawberries Recipe

Dubai chocolate strawberries are fresh strawberries served in a cup under the filling of a Dubai chocolate bar: pistachio cream, tahini and crisp kataifi, with melted milk chocolate poured over. For four cups, toast two ounces of kataifi in butter, fold it into half a cup of pistachio cream, and layer it with a pound and a half of strawberries and six ounces of melted chocolate.

What Dubai chocolate strawberries are

The dessert follows the Dubai chocolate bar, a milk chocolate bar filled with a pistachio and tahini cream and chopped kadayif, which was created in Dubai in 2021 and spread on social media in 2024. Shops then put the same filling on fruit.

Miami New Times described one such cup in November 2024, at Amsterdam Falafel Shop in Miami: fresh strawberries layered with milk chocolate, pistachio cream, knafeh, tahini and pistachio pieces, sold in 20-ounce cups for $17.99 and sold out on the morning of the launch. A writer for Her Campus paid about $13 for a cup at a gelateria in Barcelona in January 2025.

The name therefore stands for a cup, not for strawberries dipped one by one. The dipped kind is further down. One cup of this recipe comes to about 615 calories by USDA figures.

Recipe

Dubai Chocolate Strawberries

The Dubai chocolate strawberry cup — fresh strawberries layered with pistachio cream, tahini and butter-toasted kataifi and covered with melted milk chocolate. Four cups.

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Prep

20 min

Cook

8 min

Total

28 min

Serves

4

Cuisine

Middle Eastern-inspired

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds strawberries (hulled and halved)
• For the pistachio kataifi:
• 2 ounces kataifi (cut into short pieces)
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup pistachio cream
• 1 tablespoon tahini
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• For the chocolate:
• 6 ounces milk chocolate (chopped)
• 2 teaspoons coconut oil
• 2 tablespoons chopped pistachios

Instructions

1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat, add the kataifi and stir for 6 to 8 minutes, until golden and crisp. Let it cool.
2. Stir the pistachio cream, the tahini and the salt together. Fold in two thirds of the kataifi.
3. Melt the chocolate with the coconut oil in the microwave in 20-second bursts, stirring each time, until smooth and pourable.
4. Divide half of the strawberries among four 12-ounce cups. Spoon half of the pistachio mixture over them and drizzle with a third of the chocolate.
5. Add the rest of the strawberries and the rest of the pistachio mixture, pour the remaining chocolate over the top and finish with the reserved kataifi and the chopped pistachios. Serve at once, with a fork.

Nutrition

Calories:

615

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Chocolate that stays soft on cold fruit

Melted chocolate sets hard when it touches cold strawberries. Two teaspoons of coconut oil keep it soft enough for a fork for about half an hour. Strawberries at room temperature help as well.

Dry the berries well after washing. A few drops of water make melted chocolate seize into a grainy paste.

Kataifi that stays crisp

Toasted in butter until evenly golden, kataifi stays crisp inside the pistachio cream for an hour or two and then softens. A third of it goes on top at the end, where it stays dry. The kataifi page has a recipe for making the pastry at home.

The pistachio cream can come from a jar or from the pistachio cream recipe on this site.

Dipped Dubai chocolate covered strawberries

For strawberries dipped one by one, leave the stems on. Melt the chocolate without the coconut oil, so that it sets. Dip each berry, lay it on parchment and, before the chocolate hardens, spoon a little of the pistachio and kataifi mixture onto one side and scatter chopped pistachios over it.

They set in 20 minutes in the refrigerator. Six ounces of chocolate cover about 16 large strawberries. Strawberries dipped in plain chocolate are on the chocolate covered strawberries page.

What can be made ahead

The toasted kataifi keeps a week in a closed jar. The pistachio and tahini mixture, without the kataifi, keeps three days in the refrigerator. Cut the strawberries and melt the chocolate when the cups are served.

An assembled cup does not keep: the berries give off juice and the kataifi softens. The same filling inside a yeast donut is the Dubai donut.