Basbousa (Syrup-Soaked Semolina Cake)

Name: Basbousa (Syrup-Soaked Semolina Cake)
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Yield: 16
Cuisine: Egyptian
Ingredients: 400 g Coarse semolina; 60 g Desiccated coconut; 180 g Sugar, for the batter; 250 g Plain yogurt; 150 g Butter or ghee, melted; 2 tsp Baking powder; 1 tsp Vanilla; 2 tbsp Tahini, for the tin; 16 Blanched almonds; 400 g Sugar, for the syrup; 300 ml Water, for the syrup; 1 tbsp Lemon juice; 1 tbsp Rose or orange blossom water

A flat semolina batter baked in a sheet pan, scored into diamonds before it goes in, and drowned in cold sugar syrup the moment it comes out hot. An almond sits in the middle of each lozenge. The whole recipe turns on one rule about temperature, and everything else is easy.

Nguồn

Công thức của Egyptian home kitchens · 🏺 Truyền thống · Everyday Egyptian cooking — the fava beans, bread, greens and slow tomato pots that fill tables from Cairo apartments to Delta villages.

Egypt · the syrup cake — An ownerless traditional dessert, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms basbousa — also known as harisa or revani — as a sweet, syrup-soaked semolina dessert popular throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus and the Balkans, whose semolina batter is baked in a sheet pan, sweetened with sugar syrup and typically cut into diamond (lozenge) shapes or squares. The cold-syrup-onto-hot-cake rule, the score-before-baking rule, timings and quantities are this book's own.

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مطبخ الشيف شكري Cooking Secerts ( Chef Gaber )Resh ki Rasoi

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Syrup first: boil the sugar, water and lemon 10 minutes, stir in the blossom water, then cool it completely — it must be cold before the cake is out.
Mix the semolina, coconut, sugar, baking powder, yogurt, melted butter and vanilla into a thick batter. Rest 20 minutes so the semolina drinks.
Brush a 25 × 30 cm tin with tahini, spread the batter 2 cm deep and smooth the top flat with a wet hand.
Score it into diamonds with a wet knife, cutting right down to the tin, and press an almond into the centre of each.
💡 Cut before baking, not after. The scored lines are the channels the syrup runs down; cut it afterwards and the syrup sits on top and the middle stays dry.
Bake at 180 °C for 35–40 minutes until deep golden and firm at the edges.
Take it out and pour the cold syrup over the hot cake at once, slowly, letting it run into every cut. Leave 2 hours before lifting the pieces out.
💡 Cold syrup onto hot cake. The two temperatures meeting is what pulls the syrup in; hot onto hot leaves it sitting on the surface and the cake goes soggy on top and dry underneath.

💡 Mẹo

Coarse semolina, not fine. Fine semolina absorbs too fast and bakes to a dense, sandy slab instead of the open crumb that soaks properly.
The tahini on the tin is what releases it cleanly and leaves a faint sesame taste at the base — butter alone sticks.