Blueberry muffins from Rose’s Baking Basics. My favorite blueberry muffins of all time.
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Looked through a bunch of Basbousa recipes to bake a little one for our HO Egyptian group dinner last night.
I was really skeptical about this Egyptian semolina cake.
There is an Indian semolina dessert with virtually identical ingredients (rava no sheero / suji ka halwa) - semolina is lightly roasted with ghee (or oil), then sugar, water or milk is added, which the semolina absorbs and fluffs up. Finally, flavorings are added (cardamom, saffron, nuts). This is eaten as with a spoon, like a firm pudding.
For basbousa, the semolina is mixed with butter or ghee, then mixed with a liquid until it absorbs it and looks sandy. It’s then pressed into a greased baking dish and baked. You make a sugar syrup while it bakes, and then pour that over the cake and let it soak in.
Recipes vary on what the liquid addition is (yogurt vs milk vs water), what the sugar syrup proportion and viscosity are, and various other tweaks like resting the semolina before baking, resting it after soaking, what flavorings are added, and so on.
I used a combination of greek yogurt and water, cut back on the sugar for the syrup, and used both rose and orange blossom water for flavor. I rested the semolina mixture for a few hours before baking as one of the recipes suggested. I let the syrup soak in overnight, covered in the warm oven, as another did.
The outcome was much more delicious than I expected (expectation was low because I didn’t follow one single recipe, which can often result in disaster). I asked the owner/chef of the Egyptian restaurant to have a taste and be honest – he said it was very good, but next time I should rest the semolina an entire day before baking to let the tang of the yogurt develop more.
I didn’t have room for dessert after that massive meal, but there was a piece left that came home with me, and it was delicious today – the rose and orange blossom really shone through. I might actually make this again, but I’ll follow a single recipe so I can get to a better texture for the cake (this was a bit crumbly vs. what I imagine it’s supposed to be from pictures). There are cheat versions that use eggs (even Ottolenghi has a few semolina cakes soaked in syrup that I can only imagine are riffs on basbousa, but I don’t want to add eggs if the original recipe doesn’t need them).
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I also baked half a batch of brownies (Medrich brown butter no nuts) because we had a birthday girl who likes chocolate.
I’m a bit puzzled by the crust, which is usually glossy — I specially bought white sugar for this too (I only stick turbinado otherwise).
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Did you check Middle Eats? He usually goes in depth into the recipes. I have never had any interest in basbousa and I’ve never made it, so I can’t vouch for the recipe, but he usually has good information if nothing else:
This Turkish version has some very good reviews:
It strikes me that it must be quite sweet, though.
Which of Medrich’s brownie recipes is that?
I don’t use YouTube a lot, thank you for the links. (I found some Egyptian blogger recipes with pretty helpful explanations of why to do certain things or not.)
This dish is ubiquitous across the Middle East, it seems, with different names. So there are likely many, many versions. Some are firm, some are creamy, most are a thin layer, but looks like the Turkish and Greek versions are thicker. Also interesting that the Turkish recipe you linked had no ghee or any fat in the batter. The Egyptian recipes did not result in a batter at all, rather a dry mix that was pressed into the pan. They also distinguished between home style basbousa and shop bought, which apparently have different textures (and probably flavors). All very interesting, and very similar to variations in any Indian sweet!
I even found boxed basbousa mix at the little grocery store near the Egyptian restaurant!
Medrich’s cocoa brown butter brownies are my go-to starting point.
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I figured it was the cocoa brownies. A lot of photos I’ve seen of those don’t have the thin, glossy crust that brownies typically have, so it seems to happen with decent regularity. Usually comes down to how much mixing is done of the sugar with the other ingredients.
Although I’m a big Medrich fan and the cocoa brownies are among her most popular recipes, I’ve never gotten around to making them since I like her new bittersweet brownies from Pure Dessert. Plus I don’t really like brownies much overall so almost never think to bake any.
I’ll have to look at those.
I’ve not had an issue with the crust except when I didn’t have white sugar at hand and substituted turbinado.
Actually i now recall a whole discussion on brownie crust.
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I like the whipping method and find it a good way to get that crust because it gives the sugar ample opportunity to dissolve.
You can see it’s a common thread in some recipes I’ve saved in the event I feel like making brownies (increasing the salt of course 
), and ties in to what you said in that thread about the number of strokes. I think people take advice not to overmix a bit too far. It takes a surprising amount of beating a mixture to really develop gluten, and that will also depend on amount of flour and fat in the recipe. Plus you want a certain amount of gluten development. In brownies it contributes to texture so you don’t just have something that practically dissolves on your tongue right away.
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Look like perfection to me.
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Thank you!
Top of the muffin to ya!
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More summer baking. David Lebovitz’s Zucchini cake with crunchy lemon glaze. I LOVE this cake. Added lemon zest to batter. https://www.davidlebovitz.com/zucchini-cake-with-crunchy-lemon/
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I have to make this - thanks for the link!
Blueberry cobbler made with just-picked garden berries. I used Chez Panisse’s recipe for the berry “filling”, and Dorie Greenspan’s blueberry biscuit recipe for the top. Baking details on the Baking With Dorie thread (BCOTM).
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Incredibly, folks in my CSA regularly trade away their peaches, so I usually come home with a double bag of them (this is mind-blowing to me because local peaches are religion around here, and for good reason. they’re delicious.)
So I made a favorite from last summer: Smitten’s crispy peach cobbler. I split it into two dishes so Mom could take one to her dinner+card party and the other dish could stay here with me 
This dish doesn’t stay crispy overnight so you feel justified in stuffing yourself while it’s still warm from the oven!
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Thanks to @mig I was left craving for sour cherry slab pie. However I only had one pound of cherries and the supermarket that carries them has no more and who knows when or if they’ll bring them back. So I thought I’d make a mini version. Since I was doing that I thought I’d make my favorite rough puff for sweet items as the dough. Provided it can be done in a nice cool room I maintain that laminating dough is always a relaxing process.
Because this is free-standing as opposed to a slab pie which has sides to support the dough and keep the filling contained, I brought the juice from the cherries to a boil to thicken the cornstarch, which would have run all over the place otherwise.
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I’d love to learn this!
This looks incredible!!! What size is the pie?
It’s Dan Lepard’s sweet rough puff pastry from Short and Sweet. The use of an egg yolk and milk plus a little sugar really does make it tastier and also helps it brown better than standard rough puff. It’s still not really sweet with that bit of sugar, so it can be used for savory recipes, but since he has a spelt rough puff for savory items, he refers to this as “sweet”.
I am not finding an online source for this, so I’ll paraphrase it here.
250 g all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt (5 g)
25 g sugar
200 g unsalted butter, cold but pliable and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
125 ml cold milk
Mix the egg yolk and milk in a measuring cup and keep cold.
Mix flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl and rub in about 25 g of the butter until it disappears into the mixture. Add in the rest of the butter and toss with the flour to separate them. Add the milk mixture and toss with a spatula just to bring everything together keeping the butter intact. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Dust your work surface with flour and roll out the dough into an 8x14 inch (20x35 cm) rectangle. Give the dough a letter fold (fold by thirds) to end up with a rectangle of about 8x5 (20x12cm). I brush excess flour off the dough whenever I do the folds. Give the dough a quarter turn then roll out and fold again. Chill 30 minutes. Repeat the folding and chilling process twice more, for a total of 6 folds. Wrap the dough well and refrigerate or freeze for later.
I used about 8 oz of dough and the rest I froze for later. I have 12 oz of dough in the freezer.
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Thanks! It ended up being around 11x6, so it will serve four people a generous slice. In reality I’m going to eat this myself, though since my mother doesn’t eat sour cherry anything due to the acid.
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Thank you! Bookmarked.
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