Semolina Date cake with Syrup

The semolina date cake is a typical Middle Eastern dessert. It combines all the common ingredients this region has to offer, and the most famous one associated with this region is, of course, the dates. Whenever I make the cake I use half the sugar the recipe calls for. It's just that these traditional cakes are very, very...very sweet — that's the concept of dessert in the Middle East. You need a super sweet dessert to go with the bitter coffee and contradict its taste.

Bake with semolina

I love cakes with semolina flour. The grainy texture is airier and lighter than regular wheat flour. The granulated semolina is later drenched in hot syrup that makes the cake moist and tender — melting in your mouth as you eat it, yet still firm in texture. What a wonder. In the Middle East there's a vast use of semolina-based desserts across many cultures. In Egypt it's the Basbousa cake, in Libya it's the Safra, in Greece it's called Revani, in Morocco it's the Namoura, and in Turkey it's the Tishpishti.

Semolina Date cake - basic instructions

This is a simple cake. The first stage is to soften the dates — I do it in a saucepan over medium heat, combining the pitted dates and the butter for a few minutes until they come together and the dates are soft enough to mix with the semolina flour. The rest of the ingredients can be mixed all together — the order you add them to the mixer doesn't matter. There are no eggs in this cake, so it's important that the mixture forms a firm, grainy, sticky dough that you can flatten onto the surface of the baking pan. If the mix is too dry, add a little more water. After flattening the semolina date cake mix in the baking pan, mark diamond shapes with a knife — but don't cut all the way through. It's just a mark. After the cake drinks up all the syrup, we'll cut it all the way through. Add some kind of dry nut to each piece — almond, whole nuts, cashew, whatever you like best.

Life is sweet, its syrup time!

Once the cake is out of the oven, immediately spread the syrup on top, making sure it absorbs all the liquid while the cake is still hot. That's what ensures a soft, moist cake. The traditional recipe calls for a 1:1 sugar-to-water ratio (1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water) in the syrup, making it very sweet. I reduced the proportions to a 2:1 ratio (2 cups of water vs 1 cup of sugar), but it's up to you if you want to make this cake as super sweet as the original recipe. It's optional, but you can also add rose water to the syrup to give it a more oriental flavor.