Empty Bottles - Making Turkish Delight - 2006

From time to time, I'm going to post old blogs I wrote long before I really knew what blogging was. In keeping with my newly named "Two Beers and a Blog" title, I'm going to call these old, recycled stories "Empty Bottles". See what I did there? 

This particular story about making Turkish Delight came to mind this week, because my friend Kathy Wright, having just returned from Turkey, brought some of the real thing to chorus rehearsal for me to try.  It wasn't a whole lot better than what I describe below, but it definitely didn't merit the abuse I give it in my story. Jennifer was eight years old at the time I wrote this (now she's 17)... 

Turkish Delight

Doreen Philbin, June 2006

Well, we did it. We made Turkish Delight. The five people in the universe who've not yet read or seen "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" will wonder what on earth I'm talking about. It's this gooey, sugary, yummy-looking candy treat that Edmund, one of the children, receives from the White Witch. In the story, this batch of Turkish Delight is of course enchanted, so that although Edmund stuffs himself with it until he’s sick, he still wants more. So Jennifer and I decided to try out hand at making such an irresistible treat.

I guess I really should say I made it. Jennifer cheered me on (until she grew bored and ditched me to pursue less lofty interests – I think “Power Rangers” was on), but this was a big job that required more patience than either of us seems to possess. I had found several recipes online and picked one that seemed to be mostly the same as a few others I’d read. The ingredients were a snap, except for the rose water – we had to hit Bristol Farms for that one. This was an adventure in itself, as Jennifer mischievously ducked underneath my shirt and led me around the store that way, completely cracking herself up in the process. She thought it was even funnier when I pressed my hand over the spot on my shirt where her mouth was to muffle her unbridled hilarity.

The actual making of the candy took about three hours, spread over two days, including a frantic phone call to a friend of mine who makes jelly, so I could ask her why the heck the sugar solution hadn't budged past 225 degrees for 20 minutes and what the "soft ball" stage would look like when it finally got there. I ate dinner literally standing over the stove stirring the concoction while it simmered for an hour so that it wouldn't stick to pan. By the way, the dinner I'd planned on making (salmon filets with garlic mashed potatoes) had become a distant memory from simpler times, and my neglected husband, Brian, had to bring home takeout. I had become a slave to our candy.

Well, this morning I finished cutting and rolling it in powdered sugar and corn starch (which is soooo much like face powder, by the way), and Jennifer and I eagerly bit into a piece to test our results.

Wow. You just have to try it to believe it. Now we fully understand why Edmund feels so sick after eating lots of it. The mystery is why he'd actually eat lots of it in the first place... It didn’t have any taste other than, uh, sweet – the rose water didn’t even flavor it enough to make it taste like roses (which would, I imagine, have been equally unpleasant).

This only reinforces that old stereotype that British people have bad teeth and bad food.

Maybe I missed something in the recipe? Anyway, we chalked it up as one of those "don't knock it until you've tried it" things. But, man, are we ever knocking it now!

We saved some for Brian to sample when he got home later (it made 81 pieces, for cryin' out loud), and we took the rest to park day to try out on the unsuspecting homeschoolers.

When I opened the airtight container in which the recipe had advised me to store it, I discovered with dismay that all the powdered sugar had somehow been absorbed into the weird red gelatinous mass, so that now it looked all slimy and even less appealing than before. Only two people at the park were brave enough to try it at all – after that, I stopped offering it because it just seemed cruel.

At home, the remaining candy (the “control group”) had suffered the same gooey fate, which at least reassured me that transporting it in a warm car hadn’t caused the problem. Brian, like us, took one bite while wisely standing over the sink, and he promptly released it to the garbage disposal. Experiment concluded. Long live Aslan.