Chef Fadi Kattan has fond memories of seeing a tray of glistening golden-topped knafeh being placed in the center of his family’s dining table. “I remember the warm syrup being poured on top of it, pistachios being thrown on it and then being served that slice of knafeh where the cheese is still melting,” says the author of the 2024 cookbook Bethlehem: A Celebration of Palestinian Food.

Knafeh, an Arabic cheesecake with a crispy top of vermicelli-like fried dough known as kataifi, glossy with a syrup called attar (the same used on baklava) and sprinkled with pistachios, can be found front and center at any sort of social gathering in the Middle East. Now, it is also starring on TikTok.