How to Make Turkish Delight: Traditional Turkish Delight Recipe

After days of experimentation, I discovered how to make turkish delight that is chewy and has an exotic rose flavor like the one I bought in Turkey.

You may have noticed though Instagram that I recently made a stop in Turkey. My family had taken a long needed vacation by going for a one week Eastern European cruise that started in Venice, Italy, and stopped in Croatia, Greece and Turkey.

On a cruise, you only make short stops in each country and only in touristy areas at that, so I can’t proclaim myself to be an expert in Turkish anything of course. That said, rather that picking up an “authentic fake watch,” I couldn’t help but buying a couple of boxes of Turkish delight and two beautiful hand painted dishes on my stop in Kusadasi.

Turkish delight has had my interest piqued ever since I used to watch The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe at my grandparent’s house as a kid and saw how the witch lured in Edmund with promises of this delectable treat. With my love of trying new things, and my obsession with unusual flavors (especially anything with a “perfumed” type flavor like litchees or flowers like roses and lavender), I knew I had to give it a try.

I suspected that I would like turkish delight, but wasn’t prepared for how much I would like it. You see, the only candy I really have a hard time passing on is licorice. Whether it be black, red, or any other new strange version of it, something about the chewy texture has me hooked.

If you know me well enough by now, you know that I will try to make anything I see from scratch. So, I was determined to learn how to make turkish delight, and was excited to see so many recipes for it floating around the internet. After comparing a few of them, they all seemed to be pretty similar so I figured it was going to be easy to make, and I excitedly got out my ingredients and had a try at it.

Perhaps I should give bit of a disclaimer before continuing. This is by no means a healthy recipe!! It is much higher in sugar than anything I would normally make, and I’m not a huge fan of cornstarch either, even when organic. I should just say that I was on a vacation, and was a lot less strict about what I ate, and this just seemed like a fun experiment for me afterwards. If I had known what I was getting myself into, perhaps I wouldn’t have done it. But, since I did, you may as well be able to see the results. 🙂

While it is true that a lot of the recipes out there use similar ingredients to those listed on my box of turkish delight and their flavor was also pretty spot on, the texture was a lot lighter and softer, not at all chewy like my box of Turkish delight.

That’s when I realized that the texture was a deal breaker for me! The soft versions of Turkish delight have a lovely perfumed, rose flavor, but I’m overwhelmed by how sweet they are, and not at all attracted to their gooey texture. (It’s not that licorice isn’t sweet, of course, but somehow the texture makes it less overwhelming.)

Source: This article is originally published on https://thethingswellmake.com/how-to-make-turkish-delight/.