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Thursday, March 24, 2005

IMBB #13: Semolina Cupcakes with Rose Frosting

http://maki.typepad.com/justhungry/2005/03/is_my_blog_burn_1.html

I don't know what came over me. I'm not much of an experimenter in the kitchen--especially with baking--but I had already been thinking about making cupcakes when the thirteenth round of Is My Blog Burning? was announced, and as soon as I learned the topic, I had a flash of inspiration.

The syrup-soaked semolina cake known in assorted Middle Eastern locales as basbousa, harissa el loze, namoura, and probably some other names, is one of my favorite desserts. It pleased me greatly to find a simple and reliable recipe a few months ago, and I wondered if it could be converted to something cupcake-like, just for fun. The problem, I thought, is that to give the full cupcake experience, a cupcake must have frosting. But what kind of frosting could you put on a basbousa? Tess Mallos's recipe suggests serving the cake with whipped cream, but whipped cream deteriorates very quickly, and it's kind of dull, besides. I thought a rose-flavored frosting would be appropriate, as many Middle Eastern pastries are flavored with rose water, or orange blossom water, or both, but does such a thing exist? Google and ye shall find. Kattitudes has a recipe for a whole rose-flavored cake: Persian Rose Cake, with rose-almond frosting. Perfect-o.

So. I made Tess Mallos's basbousa batter exactly as for the single cake, spooned it into fifteen muffin cups lined with papers, and baked them for about eighteen minutes, until the edges were just starting to brown.

While those cooled on racks, I prepared the syrup recipe from Mallos's baklava recipe in the same book. As soon as it was done, I poked holes into the tops of the cakes (still in their tins) with my handy wire cake tester and spooned the hot syrup over the tops. (The syrup is supposed to be prepared ahead and chilled before being poured onto the cake, but I didn't realize this until the cakes were out of the oven. I don't think it matters, though.) When you make the cake in a single pan, you can just pour all the syrup over the top, knowing it will soak in eventually, whether from the top or the bottom. With cupcakes, though, a lot of the syrup rolls off, to be lost between the paper and the tin, so you have to be more sparing. I got each cupcake to absorb about a tablespoon of syrup, I think.

Then I set those aside to cool further while I made the frosting. I added the confectioners sugar one cup at a time and found that after the third cup, my mixture was more powder than frosting. I don't like the corn-starchy taste of confectioners sugar anyway, so I stopped there and began adding rose water, a tablespoon at a time, as instructed. I got a good texture after adding two tablespoons but wanted the maximum possible rose flavor, so I added one more tablespoon. The frosting was therefore a bit soft, but it held together well enough. It would probably have benefited from chilling and reblending, as it showed signs of wanting to separate, but I didn't bother.

Once I had frosted the cupcakes and covered them, I thought I was done and heated up a spinach pie (more on that below). But after I'd fortified my brain with some vegetable matter, I remembered that I had intended to top the cupcakes with some toasted almond slivers. This was a good idea, I think:

So. How do they taste?

Well, as you might expect if you've ever had a plain basbousa, a basbousa cupcake with frosting is a seriously tooth-curling experience. You must drink tea with them, and you can not eat more than one. Consider it a large homemade candy. Also, the grainy semolina cake is a bit unexpected in a cupcake, especially one that looks so delicate (the cross-pondian term fairy cake seems especially apt for these). And, as I expected, I'd rather if the frosting were not based on confectioners sugar.

Would I try this experiment again? You bet, but next time I'll substitute some all-purpose or cake flour for some of the semolina, to see if I can lighten the texture, and I'll make a buttercream frosting. I may also give them a more orangey slant--some zest in the cake, and more lemon in the syrup.

Now. About the spinach pie. On the same day that I first discovered that basbousa recipe, I also found a bunch of recipes for Middle Eastern spinach pies, sometimes called fatayer. I tried a recipe that seemed promising, and while the resulting pies looked convincing, they didn't taste quite right. I theorized that the magic ingredient was sumac, which was called for in several of the other recipes I had found, and a little while later I bought some of this substance at Sahadi. It wasn't until this month, though, that I finally made a second attempt. This time I used a fatayer recipe from About.com, doubling the amounts, using ten ounces of frozen organic spinach (defrosted and thoroughly drained), and adding two ounces of feta that had been languishing in my fridge for longer than is generally considered advisable. This time the filling was very, very good--an excellent mix of tangy and salty--but the unleavened pastry was not at all right. Furthermore, the yummy sumac stained the pastry an alarming pink where it bubbled out of the filling, and unlike the last batch, these were, well, strikingly reminiscent of a certain portion of the female anatomy. Hmmm.

So for round three of the Great Fatayer Experiment, I will be combining the pastry from recipe 1 with the filling from recipe 2, and maybe trying out different shapes, too. I'll let you know how that goes.

That's all for now. But tomorrow, maybe I'll report on the Almond Butter Cake I just made for French class.

2:27 AM | 5 fancy new comments |

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