Turkish Delight....yum

I made Turkish Delight for the very first time ~ I didn't realise how time consuming it would actually be.

I followed a recipe by Rachel Allen, I still can't understand why it uses both corn flour and gelatin as the thickening agents, all other recipes I looked at used one or the other.

Basically you start by making 2 things in separate pans: in the first pan you make a sugar and water syrup which you cook for around an hour until it reaches 125 deg on a sugar thermometer, the second pan contains a mixture that resembles cow gum glue and smells totally disgusting. In fact I nearly stopped at that point and sink-erated the whole lot. However, I persevered - the thoughts of sickly sweet rose scented and flavoured cubes of pink prettiness swirling around in my mind.

So, after the sugar reaches the correct temperature you throw in a bit of lemon juice whilst standing well back from the pan as the molten lava - like sugar spits everywhere when you do this. Then you slowly add the  boiling hot syrup to the pan (while trying your best to keep a steady hand) of white glue like stuff (which is a mixture of the gelatin, corn flour and water which is cooked until thick) while whisking furiously. It's then cooked for around another hour until it's a deep golden colour. At this point it still smells absolutely awful and resembles wallpaper paste. I then added rosewater and a few drops of pink colouring and voila... Turkish Delight. I tipped it into a well oiled tray (and yes it still stuck!) then left it to set overnight. It had stuck in the tray so I had to slice it in half and loosen it all the way around and underneath with a large spatula, then it got tipped out onto a pile of icing sugar and I hacked it into cubes with an oiled knife, generously rolled it around in the icing sugar and put it into an airtight container.

Here it is:

This is just a small amount in the picture, the recipe makes oodles of the stuff.