Masri Sweets

My favorite bakery is a place I've never seen in a town I haven't visited for almost 10 years. But Masri Sweets of Dearborn, Mich., has become such a part of the gift-giving tradition in my family that if it ever closed I would feel as if I had lost my ring finger.

One of my dad's dear friends, an Egyptian man who is married to a Palestinian woman, started sending us the deluxe boxes of Masri Sweets many years ago. Masri Sweets is a Palestinian bakery that bears the name of its founder, Muhi-Eldeen Masri, who started selling breakfast pastries on the streets of Nablus in 1902. His son and daughter-in-law own the bakery in Michigan now.

Inside a green-and-orange box of Masri Sweets is stuff that's foreign to people who aren't fortunate enough to live in a town with a large Middle Eastern population — birds nests, made out of folded pastry and stuffed with nuts, so that it looks like a budding flower; dense ballorieh, the flat, layered squares of pistachios and bits of dough, like a very decadent frosted shredded wheat; the unfortunately named "fingers," my favorite, logs of puff pastry stuffed with cashews; heavy, sticky baklava made with either pistachios or walnuts and pastry that crunches and flakes as you bite into it; chewy burma, tiny, stringy bits of dough wrapped around a filling of pistachios; mini roses, the poofy layers of pastry that disintegrate in your mouth as soon as they hit it; and besma, an earthy mix of dough and nuts.

All that for $16.20. For reals. Even my family — the people who see an "AYCE" sign as a challenge — have never been able to finish off an entire tray.

I've never tried the rest of Masri Sweets' delicacies, like the date-filled mammoul cookies or the cheese-filled shaibeat pastry, because I'm always so sated by my regular old gift box. You can order online at masrisweets.com and they'll ship just about anywhere.