A friend of mine who’s living in Jeddah told me about the existence of this bread. It is soooo delicious that I’ve made it twice.
It’s called honeycomb bread because it looks like one. And basically, it’s a cheese bun loaf but with a sweet sugary syrup over it.
The recipe is simple. For the dough, it’s just 2 cups plain flour, two teaspoons yeast, two teaspoons baking powder, about 30ml melted butter, 1/2 tsp salt, 3 tablespoons sugar, 150g Greek yogurt. This yogurt is my addition the second time baking and boy, did the dough turn out perfect! So soft and delicious!
For the sugar syrup, melt 1 cup of sugar to 1/2 cup of water. Boil for ten minutes then stir in 1/4 tsp of rise water and 2 tablespoons of runny syrup.
I used my trusty Kitchen Aid mixer and when all is incorporated and kneaded (the more you let the machine do its thing, the softer the buns going to be), let the dough rise till double in size. Then gently punch it down, and form about 19-20 small balls. Fill each ball of dough with cream cheese and place it in a circular pattern inside a well greased 9 inch pan. Any round pan will do, but don’t use Pyrex glass!
I really am such a lazy photographer. But as you can see here, the dough is so soft! Space them slightly apart but close enough because after this, leave it to rest and rise a second time. Look how fat they’ve become! Lovely! After the second rise, brush the tops with a mixture of egg and milk. Sprinkle nigella seeds. If nigella seeds prove to be too strong and earthy, just use sesame seeds. But I love the intense flavour from the nigella seeds. Then bake in the oven at 180 degrees Celcius fill the buns are browned. For my oven, this took about 25 min. Fresh out of the oven. While it’s still hot, brush generously all over with the sugar syrup. I’ve seen in YouTube videos some people poured the syrup all over and there’s even a version where they poured condensed milk all over. I cannot. I don’t particularly have a sweet tooth, so the brushing generously method works fine for me and the family. I used a loose bottom springform pan so it was easy to remove I brought this over to my sister’s for teatime treat. As you can see from the caption there, I should have added more cheese for some of the individual buns, some had a lot, some had just a bit too little. 😁
This is a keeper and I would definitely be making this for guests during teatime treats!
Loves eating...too much.
Pottering about in my kitchen is a joy.
Loves culture and different cuisines; loves buying food books and trying them out.
View all posts by 7shasha7
The Occasional Cook 