Oh happy accident! Midway through making batter, I realized that I was short 2 cups of mochi flour for the matcha cake linked below. I live in a small, rural town about 100 miles from a grocery store that carries mochi. I wasn't in a place to drop everything for a 4-hour round-trip to town, so it was essential to save the cake with ingredients I had on-hand. A bit of googling led me to the addition of tapioca, but again I came up short. I did not have another suitable substitute, when I had the brilliant idea to switch out the matcha for a Middle Eastern feel.
Besbousa is another cake that takes a lot of liquid to get the right consistency. After spending the best years of my life in Saudi Arabia, adapting the traditional Middle Eastern sweet made sense. In went some semolina. And ginger in place of the matcha.
Besbousa is usually soaked in a simple syrup, but the liquid and sugar in the batter and low amount of semolina keep the cake sweet and moist without the soak. In this cake, the semolina and coconut rise to create a besbousa layer atop the squidgy, squishy mochi layer. The bottom and edges crisp. On the whole, it's a textural delight, and different from any cake I've ever had.
The ginger flavor was quite light, it could easily be increased. I'm curious to experiment with lime and rose or orange blossom water in the future, to replicate flavors usually found in Arabic simple syrups and sweets.
Adapted from Kendra Vaculin's Matcha & Coconut Mochi Cake
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—Claire Schmotzer
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