Following the sucess of my orange and lemon turkish delight for my grandma, my mum asked me to make another batch for a family birthday party.
I decided to do traditional rose flavour this time, so off I plodded to the supermarket to get what I needed. There was no gelatine sheets available so I bought Vege-gel. The directions are pretty non-committal regarding replacing gelatine but I knew how much liquid I needed to set and worked it out from there. I dissolved one sachet in water, followed by sugar, brought it to boil then allowed it to simmer. Once it was off the heat I added a few drops of rose flavouring and a few drops of pink food colouring.
I poured it into a dish lined with cling film and put it in the fridge to set. So far so good. Just like last time! It seemed to actually set faster than the original batch. I turned it out onto a mixture of icing sugar and cornflour and made the first cut. This is where it all went wrong. It was still very wet in the middle. I could cut a sharp cube only to see it become a puddly mess right before my eyes.
I soldiered on for a bit, managing to coat each side of a few cubes before deciding to put the thing back in the fridge for another go at setting. The cut pieces ended up absorbing so much of the sugar/cornflour mixture that I ended up with these soggy blobs in a crispy shell. This may have ended up being a thing, except they didn’t hold together when picked up.
Great. So I was left with The Blob’s little sister taking over the fridge and nothing to bring to the party. I would suggest using two sachets of Vege-gel or better still see my original turkish delight post and use that recipe. You can flavour /colour it however you want. Mine tasted of rosy failureand disappointment.
You know what fixes everything? CUPCAKES! My granny is partial to a Fry’s turkish delight bar so I thought I’d do chocolate cupcakes and have a bash at doing turkish delight buttercream.
I used this recipe for the cakes
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1155643/amazing-chocolate-cupcakes-
For the icing I made a basic buttercream, whisking up 150g softened butter and gradually mixing in 300g icing sugar. I whisked in a few spoonfuls of the failed turkish delight, as well as a few drops of rosewater to taste and some pink food colouring. I’m still pretty shite at icing but I like to think my piping ended up looking like roses.
Because I will do almost anything to avoid doing housework I decided to make crystallised rose petals to decorate. It’s so super easy but they look amazing! The method I used does use raw egg so if you’re preggo it’s probably best to look up an alternative method. All you need to do is mix one egg white with a splash of water, paint it onto each side of the petals and coat with sugar! They need a few hours to dry and harden and then they’re good to go! Just make sure they’re organic/pesticide free otherwise you’ll be chomping down on all kinds of yuk.
In my humble opinion these were bloody lovely! I only ate half of one as my granny’s sister had made an epic lemon drizzle cake and I wanted in on that beauty.
lazymrsb 