I loved Turkish delight as a kid. You could by it at basically any may marked, though nowerdays you usally ony get the soft version of it. By accident I stumbled about a recipe on the internet and I just had to try it. Its actually as simple as it is unhealthy as it is dangerous for your teeth. You just have to love it.

Ingredients

• 100g blanched and roasted almonds
• 50g hulled hazelnuts
• 125g sugar
• 125g honey
• 1 egg white
• pinch of salt

Instructions

Start by mixing the honey and sugar in a pan. You want a very light simmer until the sugar is fully dissolved. Prepare a form with a sheet of baking paper where you will pour your honey into to cool down. In theory you could also just oil the form, though it just feels safer to use baking paper.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 175 degrees and roas the blanched almonds and hazelnuts. Once the almonds start to crack (you actually hear them crack), remove them from the oven. Once the hulls of the hazelnuts start to peel off, get them out and hull them (instructions on how to do that can be found here). Dont let the nuts rest in the oven after they cracked. Even with the heat off and the door open they will burn. While the colour might not give it away, the taste will (see pictures in V1).

Once the sugar is fully dissolved whip the egg white and the salt until creamy. Remove the sugar pan from the heat and fold in half of the egg white. There will be a lot of little egg white clumbs. Now add the second half. Fully fold in the egg white, there should not be any lumps left. Best use a whisk to do so. Note that this is not the typical folding in egg white procedure, its fine to mix until it is one smooth mass. Place that mix on low heat. It is important to keep the temperature below 120 degrees. You do not want the sugar to caramelize, otherwise the mix will change colour. This can be a very nice effect, if you go for the butterscotch candy feel, but not for tyrkish honey (check out V2 if you want to see the difference). If the temperature is right stirring once every other minute should be fine.

Now let the mass thicken in. Depending on how long you let this cook the end result will be rinsy (not wanted at all, check v1), soft like italian white nougat or hard as turk honey. Depending on what type of honey you use the time may vary, so Id rather go by consisteny. I kept the mix on heat for 30 minutes (V3, hard result). The mass was noticible thick and I did feel quite a bit resistance during mixing. When cutting a stripe with a spatula it took the mass about 15 seconds to close the gap again (this test will depend on how much you are making and how big your pan is, but it might give you an idea).

If you want to go softer you should be able to lay some folds and they should hold at least 2-3 seconds.

Once the consistency is what you want add the nuts. If they fold in super easy I have bad news, the mix was too liquid (see V1). Otherwise mix them in and fill them in the prepared form. Let it cool down to room temperature before placing it in the fridge. If you go for a soft version let it rest for a day. If you go for hard tyrkish honey 6h should be enough.

V3

Ingredients

• 100g almonds
• 50g cubed dates
• 125g sugar
• 125g honey
• 1 egg white
• pinch of salt

This time I used non roasted unblanched almonds because I was too lazy to blanch them. In addition I tried to substitute some almonds with cubed dates and reduced the overall content of added nuts. For the process I first dissolved the sugar in the honey as before, though tried to keep the temperature between 100 and 120 degrees after I mixed in the egg white. Under pretty much constant stirring I let that cook for 30 minutes. The result was a very hard turk honey. Too hard to actually cut so I used the hammer to get it into pieces.

The reason there for was not only the consistency, but also the reduction of nuts and the use of a smaller vessel to cool it down (so the end result was double the thickness as before).

In regards to the content I noticed that 100g nuts was too little. 150g would be the sweetspot. The dates, while delicious, are not noticeable unless you actually look for them. The consistency is very similar to the honey at first and 50g could easily be doubled, if not trippled (at least with 100g nuts).

To get my childhood memories I would go with 100g blanched and roasted almonds as well as 50g hulled hazelnuts. Though I really did like the use of dates, so that is something to keep in mind for another try for sure.

V2

Ingredients

• 150g blanched almonds
• 50g pistachios
• 125g sugar
• 125g honey
• 1 egg white
• pinch of salt

Compared to v1 I substitued some almonds with pistachios. While not bad Id rather go for hazelnuts, not pistachios next time. As the last version was way too soft and only held its form when frozen I let the mass simmer a lot longer after I folded the egg white in. This worked great and I did get the wanted consistency, however I also got a drastic change in colour.

This had two reasons:

• I did not stir the mass during simmering enough. Some of the mass caramelized at the bottom and gave the rest a lot of colour
• I let the mass simmer for too long because I wanted to make sure to get a harder output this time (40+ minutes)

Next Time:

• let the mass simmer for about 20 minutes, rather check the texture than the time
• use hazelnuts and/or almonds
• potentially reducing the honey would also result in a harder mix at the end

V1

Ingredients

• 200g blanched almonds
• 125g sugar
• 125g honey
• 1 egg white
• pinch of salt

Note: I tried substituting 50g blanched almonds with pistachio and it was: TODO

Instructions

Start by roasting the blanched almonds at 175 degrees for 15 minutes or until they start to get a light gold tint. Prepare a baking form with baking paper (TODO: add size of vessel). You will need that later on at hand, so do that before you start melting the sugar.

Note: once the almonds show any kind of colour remove them from the stove. I did not remove them the first time (only turned off the heat and I burened half of them doing so). I used bought blanched almonds and they started to crack shortly before getting color. Maybe thats the sweet spot for getting them out or turning off the heat and opening the oven door.

In the meanwhile add the honey and sugar in a pan and melt them under constant stirring until the sugar fully desolves. For me this took about 15-20 minutes at low to medium heat. At all points you want to keep the temperature under a simmer. If it starts to bubble, remove the pan from the heat. You can test are sugar crystals left by scratching your pan with a wood spartular. If there are crystals you will feel (and hear) it. Thoug note that that actually is not that great for your pan. The other option is to let a drop of the mass cool down a bit on baking paper before tasting it.

Once the sugar is fully dissolved whip the egg white and salt until its stiff. Remove the sugar mix from the heat and start folding in the egg white. I usually do that in three steps adding a third at a time.

The mix usually wil not mix in very nicely, so once it does not combine any more add the pan to the heat agean and mix the egg white in with a whisk over the heat. Once fully combined (once the mass is snow white) add the almonds.

For this step it is best if the almonds are at temperature, as fully cooled down they will cool down the sugar mass and make the mixing harder.

Note: if the almonds are too hot the mix will get super soft and the almonds might settle at the ground while cooling down. Rather go with too gold than too hot.

Once the almonds are mixed in fill the mass in the prepared vessel and press them into shape.

Once done place it in the refrigerator for a day. Afterward get it out and cut it into stripes. Enjoy

Lessions learned

If you roast the almonds, get them out of the oven once you hear the first cracking. Do not let them in the oven. The colour might not change drastically, but they will burn eventually (see comparison of the two colours in the pictures below.)

If the consistency is very soft you can freeze the mass, cut it and roll it into ground nuts (I choose pistachios). This does work to some extend, but it was way too soft it will start to melt, even in the fridge.

Next time..

• try different nuts as filling or to coat the dessert in nut crumble (pistachios might look awesome)
• once the egg white is folded in let the mass simmer for about 30 minutes to thicken in