Rose Turkish Delight
I’ll just manage a quick post before the food bloggers conference on Saturday which is taking up most of my spare time organizing. Did you know we are having our first ever New Zealand food bloggers conference? I’m so excited to be meeting another 25 food bloggers who will be attending the conference who i have followed and chatted with on the blogger-sphere. I’ll let you know how it went once its over and I have a vino in hand and my feet up.
This is my first attempt at Turkish Delight even though it is one of my favourite sweets I have never made it before. When looking for a recipe I found there are two kinds, one you just boil the ingredients like you would jam and the other adds gelatin. I decided to make the one with gelatin, I thought it least likely to fail and would perhaps not go sticky in our humid weather. I have used a recipe from The Good Food Channel but reduce the amount of gelatin since I use agar.
Ingredients
sunflower oil,for greasing
2tsp agar gelatin powder (Pacific Harvest)
255 ml water
4 tsp rose water
450 g caster sugar
3-4 drops red food colouring
2 tbsp icing sugar
2 tbsp cornflour
Method
Lightly oil a 20x25cm baking tin.
Mix the gelatine, water and rose water in a large heavy-based pan and add the sugar.
Heat gently until the sugar and gelatine have dissolved, stirring continuously.
Bring to the boil without stirring.
Reduce the heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes.
Remove from the heat, stir in the food colouring and leave to cool for 2-3 minutes.
Pour the mixture into the oiled tin and leave to set for 24 hours.
Cut into squares.
Mix the cornflour and icing sugar together and toss the Turkish Delight in the mixture.
Store in an airtight container, between layers of greaseproof paper.
Pease Pudding 
what a beautiful photo of those little jewels tumbling out, I wish I could reach out and eat one of them now. Quite an achievement to make these, they are not an everyday recipe are they? Hope you have fun at your conference, how great to meet up with people that you have been chatting to online.
What a perfect holiday treat!
I’ve never tried making Turkish Delights but these look just perfect! Thanks for all your hard work organising the conference – can’t wait to meet everyone 🙂
I have looked previously for rose water – where do you buy this (I found out before that the chemist variety is the wrong sort 🙂 !! ) Also you have mentioned the brand name Pacific Harvest for the agar/gelatine powder – is this one a better product. I have some gelatine leaf, but not sure the brand of. TIA
Hi Lyn, it’s really hard to get leaf gelatin here in NZ so I use the powder, where do you get yours from? But back in the UK I always used the leaf and it is excellent, I’m not sure of the ratio though but your packet should tell you, maybe only 2 sheets? You should find rosewater in Middle Easter, North African or Indian food stores or sections of your supermarket. The specialty shops like Farro and Nosh will certainly have it.
I had some of these and it tastes as fabulous as the pic:-)
I would be really curious to try them (if you have some leftover for Saturday 🙂 as the recipe is completely different from mine
http://alessandrazecchini.blogspot.com/2011/07/home-made-rose-turkish-delights-lokum.html
(that goes to show you that the same thing can be made in many different ways)
The main difference is that I don’t use gelatine or agar agar, although sometimes I feel like putting in pectin, but mostly I don’t. I know that is it more difficult to get it right by using corn flour and sugar syrup only, but maybe this is the way I learned it… I was told that the original Turkish recipe had no gelatin, but I wouldn’t know what most modern commercial factories use now, and of course lokum bought from a sweets’ maker in Turkey and the ones that we get in boxes here taste quite different :-).
I saw rose water in many places too in New Zealand, so it must be really popular (?) and a bottle lasts for ages!
Ciao
A.
Well I hope I can attend the next years conference and hope to meet a lot of NZ Food Bloggers, this year was a busy time for me. Anyways where do you get agar gelatin powder in Auckland?
it would be great if you could come next year and meet everyone, perhaps if we do an Auckland blogger catch up sometime you might want to join us?
These look beautiful, I love Turkish Delight, you’ve inspired me to have ago myself. I might add some pistachios too. Have a great time at the food bloggers conference, wish I was there!!
They look so pretty and perfect! A wonderful hoemade treat. Better and healthier than the store-bought ones.
Cheers,
Rosa
Thank you for today, great conference :-), the kids loved the goody bag, and husband the laptop case… he also has finished all that proofreading that I was going to do tomorrow for me, and he is letting me blog happily tonight!
Must be the word “conference”, so “official” now!!!
Ciao
A.
Ooh I might have to make some! Bizzarrely B was asking yesterday how to make turkish delight as she hadn’t had any snce she was a tiddler!
Lookins great!
Beautiful pictures! You make me want to eat turkish delight!
Yes, it was nice short catch-up on Sunday. Hope you can join me and Mairi this weekend. XO.
These look so good and pretty. I love Turkish delight too and have wanted to have a go at making some, but being vegetarian, wasn’t sure if agar would work. Now I know it does – thank you.
While it looks good and I’m sure it tasted fine, the turkish delight should contain no gelatin… when you’ll get to visit Turkey you’ll know what I mean 🙂
If you have the recipe without gelatin please try it, I have a feeling you’ll like it.
I love Turkish delight and eat the ‘real’ stuff all the time but when I saw this recipe I thought I would try it since it was likely to be fool proof. I promise to make it next time without the gelatin :0)