When Fatmah Muhammad thinks about her younger cousin Sayfollah Musallet, affectionately known as Saif, she pictures him behind the counter of his ice-cream shop in Tampa Bay, Florida, carefully decorating her knafeh with the same effort he brought to everything else.
She makes the dessert from scratch, and would sometimes ship it from California, where the 43-year-old baker lives, so the family legacy could grow nationwide. Saif would sell the Palestinian dessert in his little Amish-style ice-cream shop that carried international treats from the world over.
