Lebanon - Sfouf

Sfouf is a lebanese cake made from semolina. I bought the semolina and felt suspicious it was exactly the same as polenta. But it isn't! Semolina is made from wheat and polenta is made from corn. They look the same though.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup Fine Semolina
• 3/4 cup Course Semolina
• 1 1/2 cups All-Purpose Flour
• 2 cups White Granulated Sugar
• 2 tsp. Baking Powder
• 1 tbls. Turmeric
• 1 cup Whole Milk or lower fat milk.
• 1 cup Vegetable Oil
• 1 tbls. Tahini
• 1/4 cup Pine Nuts or Almonds

 Preheat the oven to 190 C. Spread a layer of tahini on the base of the pan you're using.

 Put all the dry ingredeints (not the pine nuts) in a bowl.

Stir the dry ingredients and then add the milk and oil. Stir well.

Pour the batter on top of the tahini in the pan. Sprinkle the pine nuts on top.

The recipe I was using said to bake for 45 minutes but beware! I baked mine for 25 minutes and it burned a little on top. It was cooked through too. So maybe bake it for 20 minutes and check. I sneakily turned the cake out upside down so you can't see the burned bits :D

When it has cooled for 10 minutes or so, tip it out and cut into squares.

We were all really surprised how nice this was! Even the kids tried it and ate seconds. The turmeric makes it a lovely yellow colour and the tahini gives it almost a peanut butter flavour. It's coarse in texture kind of like cornbread. Nice and crumbly as you eat it with a slightly chewy centre. Very nice. I can see why they save this one for special occasions in Lebanon.