Tishpishti (Semolina Layer Cake With Nuts and Jam)
Ingredients
For the syrup:
- 1 ¼ cups water
- 1 ¼ cups sugar
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about ½ a lemon)
- 2 teaspoons rose water
For the dough:
- 1 ¾ cups vegetable or canola oil
- 2 cups water
- 2 ½ cups semolina flour
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons rose water
For the filling:
- 6-8 tablespoons of fig, date, plum, or any dark jam
- 2 tablespoons of water
- 2 cups walnuts, chopped
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon rose water
- ¼ cup sesame seeds for sprinkling
Tishpishti (Semolina Layer Cake With Nuts and Jam)
Ingredients
For the syrup:
- 1 ¼ cups water
- 1 ¼ cups sugar
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about ½ a lemon)
- 2 teaspoons rose water
For the dough:
- 1 ¾ cups vegetable or canola oil
- 2 cups water
- 2 ½ cups semolina flour
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons rose water
For the filling:
- 6-8 tablespoons of fig, date, plum, or any dark jam
- 2 tablespoons of water
- 2 cups walnuts, chopped
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon rose water
- ¼ cup sesame seeds for sprinkling
When Rivka Hazan was growing up in Jerusalem in the 1930s and 1940s, Shabbat cooking required a special trip to a neighboring Persian baker. During the week, his wood-fire oven roared as he baked pitas. On Fridays, though, nearby cooks like Rivka’s mother, Ester Fernandez, would prepare hamin or cholent, the Sabbath stew, that they would drop off with the baker. He would slip them into the oven and let them cook overnight in the residual heat.
The family also relied on the large oven around the holidays, particularly Purim, to bake cakes like the sticky-sweet and fragrant tishpishti cake recipe Rivka shared with us and bite-sized treats like date-filled ma’amul, baklava, and sweet ring cookies that were given out in packages to friends called mishloach manot. The cookies were carried to the baker and transferred to his baking sheets for their trip into the oven. When they were done, the baker would take a few of each as payment, leaving him with a sweet haul around the holidays.
But Esther's tishpishti, or tespishpishtill as the family calls it — filled with jam made from figs, dates, or plums, drizzled with a sweet syrup, and sprinkled with sesame seeds — was different. The cake, which comes from Turkey and whose name translates to “quick cake,” was too sticky to move from one tray to another. So, Rivka and her siblings marched it over to the baker in one of Esther’s baking pans. Knowing that taking a slice would ruin the cake, the baker left the tray in tact.
With family roots in Toledo, Spain and Aleppo, Syria, along with many generations in Jerusalem, Rivka isn’t certain when or how this Turkish cake entered the family, but it has been made for as long as she can remember. She learned to make it by watching — not baking. Growing up, she and her siblings weren’t allowed to help in the kitchen, but by 11 or 12, she knew her mother’s recipes including this one just from observing.
Today, the neighborhood ovens of her childhood in Jerusalem have long been closed, but the recipe for the family’s cake has endured. Among her three children, 9 grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren, the cake is known as savta’s, or grandma's cake. At 89-years-old, she still bakes it for family birthdays, holidays, and special occasions — now, in the convenience of her home oven.
The recipe has also crossed the Atlantic. To help safeguard it, her grandson Itamar Ring, recently made the cake with his daughter in New York, writing it down, sharing it with us, and perhaps, even, sparking a new tradition.
