This weekend, I took a trip down Yemen and what delicious meals it had to offer. Since I am a confectionary and sweet cook, I decided to try out the famous Yemeni/ Yemenite dish called Bint Al Sahn. This literally means, "The daughter of the platter" . I am not going to read too much into what it actually means, but I am going to try and understand what is so amazing about this dish. This is a layered cake which drips of honey and "ghee". Now, as most of you might not know what "ghee" is, I will gladly explain.
You can get two kinds of "ghee". The one is animal fat based, it is literally the top cream part of the cream....the part which your doctor won't be happy to hear you are eating. Then there is the healthier option, which is the vegetable oil based ghee. I used this one, because it has the same effect on getting the best result for baking Eastern sweet dishes, but much more healthier than the animal fat based.
Ghee will be difficult to obtain in Western countries, so the best substitute to use is melted butter or a mixture of melted butter and margarine.
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| delicious with sour cream, cream or a soft cheese |
This cake is easy to make and doesn't take much time. However, you will need to have delicate hands as you have to layer the dough. In Yemen some women have unbelieveable amount of layers. However, I made only 16 layers to suit myself and my pan.
Ingredients
3 cups of all pupose flour
3-4 eggs (depending on the size of the eggs)
1 teaspoon of yeast.
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of ghee (melted butter or margarine)
1/4 cup of luke warm water.
Topping
1 cup of honey
1/2 cup of ghee
crushed almonds and pastachio (this is my little inovation)
Method
(preheat the oven to 350 degrees C)
In a small bowl, mix the yeast, sugar and luke warm water. Mix it a little and leave it for 5 minutes until it gets frothy.
In a larger bowl, mix the flour, salt, ghee and yeast mixture. Add the eggs one by one. Beat the mixture with a fork until it form a soft dough. You can start kneading the dough with your hands. If the dough is too wet, then keep adding a tablespoon of flour at a time, until you find the right consistancy. If the dough is too dry, just keep adding water. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes. After kneading you can seperate the dough into 16 golf size balls. Wrap them or place them far apart to prevent them leaking. Leave the balls to rise for about 20 minutes.
Grease a cake size pan generouslly with butter. Once the balls have risen, take one ball at a time and roll the dough out until it is thin to see through it. You need to be careful so that the dough doesn't tear. Place each rolled out dough in the baking pan and spreading ghee between each layer. After every 4th layer, you can spread honey on the dough and prinkle some nuts.Keep repeating this until all the balls are used. Finally, brush the top part of the cake with some egg yolk,
Bake the cake for 20 minutes until it is golden brown and the layers look as if they are seperating.
While still hot, pour the honey all over the cake and you can add some more ghee and nuts.
Serve immediately with tea.
Wanne be creative? Traditionally this cake doesn't have nuts in it, but I added some to give it a twist of flavour. Also, traditonally, they don't layer the honey inbetween the dough. However, if you want to make it sweeter, just pour honey after every 5th layer.
Serving suggestions: Bint al Sahn is delicious on its own. In Yemen, it is often served in the centre of the table and people break a piece off and dip it into the warm honey.
However, you can slice the cake into a neat slice, drizzle some honey and serve it with cream or sour cream. Personally, I enjoyed it with sour cream and therefore even a soft cheese would do.
Eat it still warm! It tastes amazing!
Please feel free to share your ideas.
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