Alright y’all, it’s time to channel your inner Auntie and make some Kunafah, with an -ah instead of an -eh because I’m Egyptian and THAT’S HOW I TALK.

For those of you who don’t know what Kunafah is, I describe it as baklava’s creamy, gets into VIP, bad and boujee lil cousin. The cousin that achieves all your dreams and the family fawns over, but they don’t even come to the functions that often. They moved. So what’s left in the little cake stand at your favorite ‘Mediterranean’ joint is… baklava. 

Instead of layers of flaky phyllo, kunafah has shredded phyllo that crisp up even more beautifully and instead of a crunchy pistachio center, here we have a cream center. Sounds better already right?

If you DO know what it is and grew up with it, you might be like me and find it hard to trust a recipe on the internet. Instead, you call mama/baba/tunt/titta 7 times for vague measurements that don’t mean anything with ingredients you never used because they’re only at the Arab store. Or maybe you went abroad, and you’re fancy now and you can’t find it anywhere! You can’t wait to go back! What are you gonna do, fam? I got you.

SN: they’re not only at the Arab store anymore! In the ingredients list, I’ve linked Amazon pages for the items that might be harder to find so at least you’ll know what it looks like. The farina is a finely milled wheat, which is used as a breakfast cream of wheat situation in some cultures too, so you can use a different/cheaper brand if you find it.

Recipe

For the kunafah:

1. Preheat your oven to 345. Why so specific? Why not 350? Do you mean 375? IDK I asked my mom THREE times and she insisted it was 345 and that’s the truth.
2. In a medium sized pot on medium heat, plop in a spoonful of clarified butter. Add farina to the butter and stir constantly, without raising the heat, for several minutes. You should start to smell a nutty fragrance and see the grains get a little toasty.
3. Add the can of puck, and incorporate it into your toasted farina. This takes a second and it is going to look too thick. Add ¼ of heavy cream, a little at a time, and feel free to add more until you have a loose custard-like mixture. Add vanilla off-heat and set aside.
4. I used a round cake pan for a thick layer of custard, and I’ve also used a 9 x 11 pan for a thinner kunafah. I suggest just adjusting to whatever baking pan you have instead of going out and buying one. Here’s the fun part – rip a couple handfuls of phyllo dough from the package and put them in the bottom of the pan. Drizzle with clarified or melted butter, and start ripping it up into shreds, incorporating the butter. It should end up looking like a shiny, pillow mass of strings. Form it into an even layer into the bottom of a pan. In a separate bowl, repeat the process.
5. Add the custard in an even layer. On top of the custard, add your second batch of buttered shredded phyllo. Pop into the oven at for 30-40 minutes. It’s done when the top is golden and crispy.

For the syrup:

1. Everything into the pot on medium low for 20 minutes, stirring every now and again. It should turn into a syrup slightly thicker than simple syrup.
2. Once out of the oven, while the kunafah is still warm, try to evenly distribute the syrup all over. It feels like a lot of sugar, but remember you haven’t added sugar to the kunafah at all yet! Let it soak up all the sugary goodness for as long as you can let it sit (15 minutes is good) and enjoy while it’s still a little warm!

A word on clarified butter:

Maybe the most village thing I do, at the beginning of each move, is… go to costco, buy four pounds of butter, clarify the whole batch and section it into jars which I then keep in the freezer.

The perks of clarified butter is that the water has been boiled out so it burns way less easily. A little bit goes a long way for frying pancakes, sauteing veggies, and browning meat (especially chicken hooooohmygod). People tend to use the same amount of clarified butter as they would regular butter when it’s really a more concentrated version, so be mindful.

If you’re interested in making it, simply take as much butter (salted or unsalted, doesn’t technically matter, I use unsalted) as you want to clarify and put in a pot over very low heat. For a pound, I would leave it alone for about an hour, checking periodically. The butter will melt, and then foam, and then the solids will drop to the bottom which is how you know it is done. Pour the butter into a jar, leaving the solids on the bottom. The mixture will solidify into an almost coconut oil consistency. That’s all there is to it!

First of all, I have absolutely no idea why this is called Russian Honey Cake. What I do know is that even though it’s a weird spongy texture, this cake is a fan favorite, a breeze to whip up, and hard to mess up.
This cake is pulled from a Food52 recipe and the glaze is from another cake recipe and they just work SO well together y’all. Their rendition has nuts in it but I don’t like crunch in the way of my dessert. If you’d like, add walnuts at the end mk.

SN: I know the picture has a bundt cake shape, which looks nice but honestly glazing it was a pain and I will go back to a round cake pan next time. This what I get for trying to be pretty for y’all.

Recipe

For the cake:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F and spray your cake pan, bundt pan, or springform pan with Pam. I like the one with flour already in it, which is especially for baking and way less messy than buttering and flouring.
2. To separate the eggs, crack the shells into two pieces and roll the yolk back and forth. If you’re struggling, just crack an egg into your clean clean hand and roll the yolk around, letting the whites fall through your fingers. Put the yolks in another bowl.
3. Stick the bowl with the egg whites in the fridge until further notice.
4. Into the bowl with the yolks, add 1 cup of sugar and use your hand mixer to beat until it turns a pale yellow color.
5. Add some honey, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1 cup sour cream (or ricotta or cream cheese or half of one and the other – any combination to get to 1 cup). This is a great way to use odds and ends of other random dairy pints you have sitting in the fridge. Beat it up.
6. Slowly, with the hand mixer on, add flour about ¼ cup at a time.
7. Take the bowl with the egg white out, and SWITCH THE BEATERS ON THE MIXER to the whisk, or whisk by hand and prepare to be there for a while. Beat the egg whites until you get stiff peaks. That means if you put the whisk in the egg whites, which are now white and thick by the way, and lift it straight up you’ll get a little mountain and the egg whites don’t just flop back down. Here’s a helpful link of what that means.
8. When you have achieved stiff peaks, fold the egg whites into the batter very carefully so as to not deflate them. After minimal handling, pour batter into the cake pan. Don’t fill it to the top unless you want a mess in the oven! Leave room!
9. Put it in the oven 35-45 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean.

For the glaze:

1. Add butter, salt, sugar and cream into a pot on medium heat. Bring to a full rolling boil while stirring the whole time. Boil for exactly one minute and then take it off the heat and chill for a couple minutes.
2. Add sugar, ¼ at a time and whisk pretty furiously until well incorporated. Keep adding the sugar and you’ll see it get thick enough to call itself a glaze! Let it cool some more if it isn’t thick enough, and if it’s too thick, add some cream.
3. Put it all together! Place the cake on a wire rack, or hell even a plate and very slowly pour glaze on top. If it’s really thin, and you got time, I put something to catch the drips under the cake and do a couple rounds of glaze to get a yummy sugary crust all over.