What’s cooking today: Turkish Delight

Ingredients

625 g granulated sugar

625 ml water

7 ml cream of tartar

150 g cornflour

2 Tbsp rose syrup

190 ml more water

Icing sugar and cornflour for dusting

Method

I used a 20 cm x 20 cm square baking tin for this. It needs to be greased on the bottom and sides with a flavourless oil.

Put the sugar and 625 ml water in a saucepan with the cream of tartar and heat gently, stirring, until all the sugar is dissolved. Once it has dissolved completely, boil for 12 to 18 minutes to make a syrup. Keep an eye and stir if and when you need to.

Put a small bowl of cold water into the freezer before continuing.

Stir 150 g cornflour into 190 ml water and whisk it into the mixture. Whisk until it becomes gloopy, then switch to a spatula and continue cooking and stirring until you can use the spatula to draw a line, as it were, through the middle of the mixture, like parting the Red Sea. This can take anything from 30 minutes to an hour. 

To test the mixture, use a teaspoon to spoon a little bit of syrup into the iced water you put in the freezer. It should make a little ball which, when you remove it with your fingers, holds itself rather than falling apart or becoming squishy.

Now stir in 2 Tbsp rose syrup (or use 2 tsp rose water and a couple of drops of pink food colouring) into the mixture until the colour is even all over.

Pour it into the greased pan and leave out at room temperature to set. This will take several hours; don’t be tempted to interfere with it until at least six hours or more.

You can pop it into the fridge if you like (it is summer after all), though purists might not. I did, and it came to no harm.

When ready to turn out, combine equal quantities of cornflour and icing sugar in a small bowl and sift onto a clean work surface. Turn the delight out carefully onto this sifted powder mixture. It should hold its shape. If it doesn’t, however, all may not be lost: just use a spatula or flat knives to shape it again. Cut into strips and then across into squares, and dunk the squares into the mixture on all sides. You can sift more of it over if you like. 

I left mine to set in the fridge and they were just right, though I did sift more icing sugar and cornflour over them. DM/TGIFood

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