Private Traditional Coffee And Dessert Making Activity

Join us at our museum and guest house in Gyumri to learn how to make traditional Armenian coffee and desserts, getting to know their origins and cultural significance to local people. After a tour of our museum, where you’ll see antiques from as far back as the Russian Empire, including the largest collection of historic photos of Gyumri, you’ll roll up your sleeves with one of our local chefs and start baking. You’ll start by making traditional Armenian coffee as well as ghayfa, a roasted wheat drink once popular in Gyumri that’s all but forgotten today. Then we’ll bake one of four traditional desserts of your choosing: yaghli, layers of thin dough and oil fried and topped with sugar; bishi, a yogurt-based pastry that’s fried and eaten with hot chocolate; shakar lokhum, an oily and sweet cake baked in the over; or bagharj, another yogurt-based pastry made either sweet or salty and decorated with intricate designs. Most of the ingredients used to make these local delicacies come from our local farm, and the tools you’ll use to make and eat are antiques carefully saved by our team.