Basbousa
RECIPE BY MIREILLE MATHALON (EGYPT) – SEPHARDIC HERITAGE COOKBOOK
Ingredients:
For the Cake
- 8 ounces of slivered almonds, toasted
- 2 sticks of unsalted butter
- 16 ounces plain yogurt
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups semolina flour
- 3 tablespoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 5.5 ounces unsweetened coconut (recipe called for 8 ounces, this seemed like too much)
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ cup water (we added filtered water)
- 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (recipe called for ½ lemon, juiced, but we only had pre-squeezed juice)
- 1 teaspoon of rose water
Recipe:
- Preheat oven to 400F. Grease or place parchment paper in a 9x12 rectangular baking dish (we did the latter).
- Toast almond slivers on a baking tray until golden brown (we accidentally left this step for later, but this is a part of the cake itself rather than the garnish!)
- Melt butter (we used the microwave for 2 minutes)
- Add yogurt and sugar to a bowl and mix. Add in melted butter, semolina, baking powder, vanilla, and coconut, measuring each ingredient carefully. Mix.
- Pour mixture into the baking dish, making sure to pour into the parchment paper rather than the ungreased mold below it.
- Bake for 30 minutes.
- Prepare syrup: combine sugar, water, lemon juice, and rose water in a saucepan over stove. Heat until thickened. (we did not heat the syrup – instead of being drizzled on top as a garnish, the result was of a lighter consistency and sunk into the cake for extra moisture)
- Remove cake from oven and pour syrup over top.
- Sprinkle with additional slivered almonds.
- Cut into diamond-shaped pieces.
In our excitement, we committed two minor missteps that, to our luck, did not result in an utter disaster but instead made this recipe our own. Firstly, we added the toasted almonds only as a part of the garnish at the end instead of also baking the cake with them as a top layer (we got confused as both the steps for the creation of the cake and garnish included almonds). Secondly, we created the “syrup” at room temperature rather than over heat on the stove – by the time we realized our mistake, we had already poured the mixture over the cake. This confusion most likely occurred because the boxed basbousa recipe, to which we compared our version, did not require the combination of ingredients over heat. Nevertheless, both these deviations, while perhaps inauthentic, contributed to making the dessert lighter, which we deemed very necessary given the sheer amount of sugar and butter that went into the baked portion. Overall, we all agreed that we had a complete blast with this activity!