How to make this simple addictive confectionary as featured in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
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Signing UpStep 1: Ingredients and Equipment
the recipe was found on abc.net.au, further recipes and variants can be found with Google.
Ingredients (refer to the picture):
Ingredients (refer to the picture):
- 4 cups white sugar ($1.50/kg)
- 1 litre water
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 1 cup cornflour ($2/kg)
- 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1.5 tablespoons rosewater ($1/50mL)
- red food colouring ($1/50mL)
- 1 cup icing sugar
- 2 pans
- measuring cup
- measuring spoons
- cake pan (square preferrable)
- knife
- stiring spoons
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The ONLY way that this recipe works is to go and find the instructions on another website. Here's why:
Recipe tells you to let the sugar dissolve and if the liquid starts to boil lower the heat. OK, so the sugar is dissolved. NOWHERE in these useless instructions does it say to make a syrup with the sugar.
Then it tells you to add the cornflour mix and then just incorporate and then turn it out. Nowhere does it say that you need to do that over heat for an extended period of time
I used expensive organic ingredients and had to throw the whole lot away. I just finished making a SUCCESSFUL batch from a recipe on about.com.
If that qualifies as not nice and I get banned from this site, so be it. But frankly I am not going to sugar coat the feedback on what was the most poorly written recipe I have ever used (that incidentally cost me about $10.
I'll tell you my theory about that one:
Turkish delight is an 'oriental' sweet. The Romantic English writers, fathers of modern fantasy (e.g. J. R. R. Tolkein and C. S. Lewis), though they were intelligent and insightful people, were not the most enlightened of multiculturalists.
They had a very affectionate notion of proper, traditional, English things like beer, valour and buttered toast. Anything un-English, though it might be very admirable, or impressive, was nevertheless looked on with a certain amount of suspicion.
You will notice that the reinforcements who came to join the baddies in The Lord of the Rings, for example, all came from the South and the East. The heroes were the good old country shire folk with their broad English dialects. The Calormenes in the Chronicles of Narnia were dark and treacherous merchants and politicians who looked and dressed like Turks, ate their bread with oil, mistreated their animals and hated the chivalrous and fair-skinned people of Narnia.
It's an intellectual failing known as 'orientalism', or more basically, the failure to identify with people of other human cultures as equal and essentially similar to yourself.
I hope nobody finds this comment offensive. I am of mixed ethnic background and have lived in both England and the Middle East, which is why I identify with the issue. I should add for the record, that I loved the Narnia books as a child, and think they contain a lot of beautiful and insightful writing.
I also love both lokum (real turkish delight) and real ale!
-- wilderness
It's the consistency of Vaseline mixed with semi hardened jello and this is the second time that this has happened, I tried to boil it longer this time but it's still not quite stiff enough to cut, so of you can help, that would be great thanks! :)
In australia you can by "rose extract" which is a syrup form of rose water.
Or you can make your own
tipnut.com/how-to-make-rose-water-4-recipes/
When I was a kid, we visited the factory there. It was a small operation and they had the cool policy that everyone switched jobs every 2 hours.
I usually buy the economy box, which translates to "the ones that were cut funny."
Suzanne in Orting, WA
Very good insights, Wilderness. I always took it being reactionary to WWII. In fact, the people who help the (British) in LotRs are described being close to Italian, Japanese and German. The "Italians" are the hardest to find. Also, according to my sister, the "eagles" represented the US, but I didn't see it. Probably because it was way too blunt, where Tolkien normally is sly about it. Or maybe he just couldn't come up with another ending :)
Cornmeal is for tortillas etc
Along those lines, those who don't know, icing sugar in the UK is called powdered or confectioners sugar in the US
Icing sugar contains flour, caster sugar, AND confectioners sugar and is almost a "ready made royal icing"
For this recipe you can use generic-brand icing sugar (as it often does not contain flour) or pay a little extra for confectioners sugar.
oh well it'll hopefully happen some day.
I thank you on behalf of those that needed the help