Sfouf

Lebanese semolina cake turned brilliant yellow with turmeric and scented with anise, baked in a tahini-brushed tin

Origin: Mount Lebanon

From the journey of Anise.

Sfouf is the everyday cake of Lebanon: the one kept under a cloth on the sideboard, offered without ceremony to anyone who calls, and eaten with coffee at eleven in the morning. It is dairy-free, made with oil rather than butter, and it is therefore also the cake of Lent and of the fasting periods of the Maronite and Orthodox calendars, which is much of why it became universal. Its colour is its name. Sfouf is generally taken from the Arabic root that gives aṣfar, yellow, and the yellow is turmeric, used here in a quantity that would be unusual anywhere else in the Levantine sweet kitchen. This is not a colouring agent hiding in the background: a good sfouf carries one to two teaspoons of turmeric to five hundred grams of semolina, and it tastes of it, earthy and faintly bitter underneath the sugar. Against that earthiness sits the anise, and the two are the whole architecture of the cake. Anise has grown on the hills of Mount Lebanon and the Bekaa since before it was written about, and it is the flavour the Levant reaches for when something needs lifting. Here it cuts the turmeric, and without it the cake is heavy and slightly medicinal. Many households add a little ground fennel alongside, and some add mahlab. The tin is brushed with tahini rather than greased with fat, which is a technique worth knowing. Sesame paste stops the cake sticking, contributes a nutty edge along the crust, and toasts to a good brown; it also keeps the whole thing dairy-free. Pine nuts or blanched almonds are pressed into the top in rows before baking, and the cake is cut into diamonds in the tin, never into squares. The texture should be slightly coarse and a little dense, from the semolina, and moist rather than crumbly. It improves overnight and keeps for the best part of a week.

Ingredients

For the Tin

2 tbsp tahini, for the tin

Cake

300 g fine semolina
120 g plain flour
220 g caster sugar
2 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp anise seed, finely ground
0.5 tsp ground fennel seed, optional
2 tsp baking powder
0.25 tsp fine sea salt
300 ml whole milk, or oat milk for a fasting version
150 ml mild olive oil or sunflower oil

To Finish

50 g pine nuts or blanched almonds

Method

Heat the oven to 170°C fan, 190°C conventional. Brush a 23 cm square tin thickly and evenly with the tahini, right into the corners and up the sides. Do not line it with paper.
Grind the anise seed to a fine powder in a spice grinder or mortar. Whisk it with the semolina, flour, sugar, turmeric, fennel if using, baking powder, and salt until the colour is completely even with no yellow streaks.
Pour in the milk and the oil and whisk to a smooth, loose batter, roughly the consistency of double cream. It will look thinner than a cake batter should; this is correct, because the semolina will absorb a great deal of it.
Let the batter stand for ten minutes so the semolina hydrates and swells. It will thicken noticeably.
Pour into the prepared tin and level the surface. Score the diamond pattern lightly into the batter now if you want clean lines later, then set the pine nuts or almonds in rows, one at the centre of each diamond.
Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the top is deep gold, the edges have pulled slightly from the tin, and a skewer comes out clean. The centre should be set but still just yielding.
Cool in the tin for at least twenty minutes, then cut into diamonds by making parallel cuts one way and diagonal cuts across them. Serve at room temperature.

Notes

Sfouf is better on the second day. Keep it in the tin, covered, at room temperature; it holds for five or six days and does not want the refrigerator. The turmeric quantity is not a misprint. Two teaspoons gives the correct saffron-yellow crumb and the earthy background note the cake is built on. Reducing it to a colouring quantity produces something pleasant and anonymous. A northern Lebanese version, sometimes called sfouf b'debs, replaces a third of the sugar with grape molasses and omits the turmeric entirely, giving a dark cake. In the Chouf, ground mahlab often joins the anise. For a Lenten cake, use a plant milk and check that the sugar is suitable; the recipe is otherwise already free of animal products apart from that.

The Gastrographer

Name: Sfouf
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 16
Cuisine: Mount Lebanon
Ingredients: 2 tbsp tahini, for the tin; 300 g fine semolina; 120 g plain flour; 220 g caster sugar; 2 tsp ground turmeric; 2 tsp anise seed, finely ground; 0.5 tsp ground fennel seed, optional; 2 tsp baking powder; 0.25 tsp fine sea salt; 300 ml whole milk, or oat milk for a fasting version; 150 ml mild olive oil or sunflower oil; 50 g pine nuts or blanched almonds

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control