The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

It’s no news that The Four Fat Ladies is one of the best bakeries in the country. We mean, what’s not to love about their bundt cakes, luscious brownies, and beautiful trifle jars? Like many other Cairo bakeries, TFFL has got into the Ramadan spirit and done its own festive specials, which we tried at the Sheikh Zayed branch.  

For those who haven’t visited the newest branch, as a venue, it has an all white interior with orange and purple writing on the walls like ‘How much can you cake?’ and ‘OH MY BROWNIES’, and even though it’s not a small shop like the Zamalek branch, it’s still much more of a takeout branch. There are two desserts displays, one for the brownies and jars, and the other is for their beautiful classic cakes and the Ramadan specials.

Enough about the venue and let’s move to Ramadan’s specials. From Mango Cheesecake and Konafa with Dates, to Halawa-stuffed Baklava and Basboussa Strawberry Trifle, the choices were all more interesting than each other, but thanks to the helpful staff we made our choices and took the Baklava Nutella Crunch (170LE) and Konafa with Peanut Butter and Chocolate (170LE) home.

The square-shaped baklava consists of layers of phyllo dough with a very thick layer of Nutella in the middle, which drizzled with simple syrup and more Nutella, a sprinkle of crushed hazelnut and then cut into mini squares like their signature brownie bites. Despite the simple syrup making the dessert very, very sweet, the phyllo dough was perfectly crispy and flaky, the hazelnut added more crunch and gave it a richer flavour, and we loved the generous amount of Nutella because, well, you can never have enough Nutella.

The konafa, meanwhile, was flawless. Filled with a thick layer of peanut butter that worked perfectly the thin layer of chocolate, the konafa itself was very crispy and far from tough and dry, and, unlike the Baklava, the sweetness was on point.

While paying for the desserts, one of the staff members recommended their newest brownie, the Nutella Blondies (7LE per piece with a minimum of 4 pieces per order) and obviously we gave it a try. Unfortunately, at the time of our visit, the blondies had a strong raw flour flavour, were very crumbly and devoid of Nutella taste. It was a shame, because their blondies are generally amazing, especially the S’mores one.

All in all, though, we loved The Four Fat Ladies’ Ramadan specials. Everything was presented beautifully in the display, the staff were really helpful, the packaging is amazing. Sheikh Zayed residents are very, very lucky.