Sheker Chorek

Sheker chorek (Şəkərçörəyi, Sheker Chorek) is an Azerbaijani baked sweet made mainly from wheat flour, butter, sugar and eggs. It is shaped into rounds with a slightly raised center, and some have fine cracks on the surface. Its color is a pale cream. Some are finished with a dusting of powdered sugar once they have cooled.

The first part of the name, şəkər, means sugar, and the second part, çörəyi, is related to the word for bread. Despite the name “sugar bread,” it refers not to a large everyday loaf for slicing but to individual, butter-rich sweets. In Russian it is also known under the spelling shaker-churek (шакер-чурек).

A method in which the butter is mixed first

What stands out in sheker chorek is how the fat is handled before the flour goes in. In a recipe (a set of ingredient proportions and method) included in an official Azerbaijani presentation of its cuisine, melted butter and powdered sugar are mixed for a long time, with egg whites added little by little along the way. Only after that are the sifted flour and vanillin added.

One example of the official recipe uses 260 grams of butter and 300 grams of powdered sugar for 530 grams of wheat flour. With butter weighing about half as much as the flour, and plenty of sugar as well, it is a rich confectionery dough quite different from that of everyday bread. The egg whites go into the dough and the yolks onto the surface. Rather than simply adding whole eggs to the dough, it takes the extra step of using the whites and yolks separately.

Rolled into balls, brushed with egg yolk and finished once cooled

The dough is rolled into individual balls and arranged on a baking sheet lined with paper. The surface is brushed with egg yolk before baking, and powdered sugar is dusted on once the pieces have cooled. Each piece shows both the white of the powdered sugar and the color of the yolk-brushed areas. It is not a sweet centered on wrapping a walnut or almond filling; it is made to let you taste the sweetness of the dough itself and its butter.

Shekerbura (şəkərbura), also popular in Azerbaijan, contains the same word for “sugar” in its name, but it is a sweet in which a filling of nuts, sugar and the like is wrapped, the edges sealed and a pattern applied. It differs from the round mound of sheker chorek both in the composition of its cross-section and in its shaping process. Although they share part of their names, the two are not simply different shapes of a single sweet.

There are also versions made with yeast

Sheker chorek recipes include some without yeast and some with yeast. The cookbook Novruz süfrəsi, which bears the name of Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, presents a yeasted version as the sheker chorek of Shamakhi (Şamaxı). Yeast is mixed into the egg whites, then melted fat and sugar are added in turn and mixed well before the flour is combined. Because egg yolk is applied to the top of each rounded piece before baking, the outward shape is close to that of the yeast-free version, but what goes into the dough is different.

A Baku cooking record also gives an example in which clarified butter and granulated sugar are beaten until white and fluffy and the sugar grains can no longer be detected, after which cardamom, a small amount of baking soda, vanilla and flour are added. Unlike the versions that add egg white to the dough, this one has egg yolk dropped onto the center of each piece before baking.

The method presented by the tourism board as a sweet of the Absheron-Khizi region combines clarified butter and powdered sugar with egg yolk and baking soda, then adds sifted flour. The rounded dough is brushed with egg yolk and baked; it is an example served at festive tables.

Clarified butter is the fat of butter concentrated by removing water and milk solids. Even at the same weight as ordinary butter, it contains a different amount of water. The resulting dough changes depending on the amount of flour, the type of fat and how the egg white is added.

In a chapter collecting sweets for Novruz, which celebrates the spring new year, this Shamakhi version appears alongside pakhlava and baked sweets from various places such as Baku and Ganja. Rather than a single kind of sweet dominating the holiday table, the celebration brings together local sweets, and sheker chorek takes its place among them.

In the village of Demirchi in Shamakhi, too, households were reported baking sheker chorek ahead of Novruz in 2026. It is a sweet set out alongside shekerbura and pakhlava on the eve of a village festival when people visit the cemetery. The villagers speak of their own way of making it as particular to their locality. The “Shamakhi version” that the cookbook presents under a place name, and the testimony that village households still make it today, show that there are different ways of passing it down even within the same region.

A 2001 household record preserved in Baku

A Baku cooking column dated November 1, 2001, carries a sheker chorek recipe recorded after the writer asked how a sweet they had eaten was made. Noting that the method differs from household to household, it sets down a cardamom-scented formula. It describes even the finishing step of dropping a single drop of egg yolk onto the center of each piece, giving a picture of round, lightly browned sweets baked in batches at home.

The version that adds powdered sugar and egg white and the version that uses granulated sugar and cardamom share a name but differ in the aroma of the dough and the way the eggs are used. This sweet baked from sugar and butter, while called by the same name, has been passed down through the methods of each individual kitchen.

Glossary