Dessert is more than a meal path for the Turkish; it is a way to make your visitors sense at home and create a warm environment. It also plays a role in celebrating the residing, the useless, and the holy.
“Let’s devour sweet, talk sweet” is a famous phrase that relays how critical desserts are in Turkish tradition and delicacies. In Turkey, dessert is often a social ritual; a tradition meant to be shared. Desserts have constantly held a special place in Turkish delicacies and play a critical role among other ingredients. Offering candies or something to drink to someone is one of the Turkish lifestyle’s maximum honorable functions. They are fed on in the normal day-by-day food in normal Turkish delicacies, too.
Desserts have specific meanings whilst served on unique activities from celebrations to funerals. Here are a number of the ceremonial cakes you should realize if you manifest to come to Turkey and locate yourself with a plate of Turkish dessert in your hand.
Lokum (Turkish pleasure)
A famous Turkish dessert, “lokum,” is the best present to offer, the first-rate associate with Turkish coffee and an important piece of religious feasts. It became first known as “Rahat ul-hulküm” in Arabic which means, “comforting the throat,” but in time, it has become “locked” in modern-day Turkish. Turkish pleasure, which became an important part of the imperial kitchen of the Ottoman Empire, has masses of years of history.
The production of lokum in Anatolia is going to return to the fifteenth century. Still, it was not until the 17th century that it received recognition and started to identify with Turkish culture. Lokum began to be produced en masse toward the end of the 1700s in cube-shaped cuts, which remains the form one identifies Turkish pride with these days.
There is a ramification of locums, including the conventional and classic hazelnut ones in addition to double roasted, with pistachio, rose, gum, and saffron, with a chocolate coat if you want to move a little bit crazy. But lower back within the day, it has become now not possible to discover special flavors in lokum.
It is thought that, at the start, honey and molasses have been used as sweeteners, and flour has been used for the consistency of lokum. In the second one 1/2 of the 18th century, as Anatolia was brought to refined sugar, it began to be used in lokum production and different candy ingredients in preference to flour.
Lokum, the maximum desired candy in the Ottoman Empire for nearly three centuries, turned into Europe through a British vacationer in the 18th century. It started to be known as “Turkish satisfaction” and soon became acknowledged around the world. Turkish delight is one of the first-class and precious gifts that can be taken domestically after a blissful trip to Turkey. You can without difficulty get a percentage of lokum as a present for your buddies and family from the airports, stopovers, or bus stations.
Güllaç
Güllaç, an aggregate of phrases “güllü” and “aş,” which means “food with roses,” is a traditional Ramadan dessert. It is preferred especially in the course of iftar, when one breaks their fast at nightfall, as it’s miles a mild dessert. You can see this traditional dessert in the home windows of all pastry shops throughout the holy month. The records of güllaç date again to the fifteenth century.
At first, human beings made dough from corn starch which they dried all through the summer season. After softening the dough with milk and sugar, they could consume it in the course of winter. In the second half of the 15th century, the sultan followed these meals, which become subtle in the imperial kitchens, and have become the dessert we understand today.
The dessert, on occasion, includes rose water, although it is optionally available. It is generally garnished with sparkling pomegranate seeds and floor nuts, which include walnuts or hazelnuts. It is likewise viable to look at güllaç, which is garnished with pistachio.
İrmik helvası:
Halva’s origins return to the Middle East, but it could be seen in many areas from the mountains of Eastern Anatolia to the Balkans. So, it isn’t always unexpected to see halva in all forms of cuisines: Arabs, Turks, Jews, and more.
The Turks’ first encounter with halva changed when they became familiar with Islam as their religion and started to get familiar with the Arabic tradition. In the Ottoman Empire, halva had a cultural role. Today, it is commonly prepared at the deceased’s house after a funeral, where it is served to the ones coming and is also dispensed to the associates. It is a culture to prepare halva on the seventh day, 40th day, and 12 months after a person’s loss of life.
Baklava
Baklava is, at a distance, the most well-known dessert. With its richness and sweetness, it makes for the favorite pastry of desire for Turkish feasts. Baklava is ready by stuffing pistachios, nuts, or, less commonly, almonds or hazelnuts, between layers of dough leaves. The birthplace of this dish is the city of Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey, which has long been associated with pistachios and baklava itself.
It is known that within the Ottoman palace and mansions, the cooks who had been experts in making the baklava were been desired. The chef to be recruited is given a baklava making take a look at it, and a pilav (rice meal) test. The master of baklava became consistent with his talent for making the dough as thin as possible.
Before baking, the baklava tray was added to the house owner; the proprietor would drop a gold coin on the pinnacle of a tray from half a meter. If the gold reached the bottom of the tray, passing all of the layers, the chef was taken into consideration a hit, and the gold within the tray went to the chef as a tip. If the gold stayed on the layers, the baklava tray would be sent back to the kitchen. If this demonstration failed in the presence of visitors, the landlord felt ashamed and disgraced.
Baklava turned into now not simplest an essential part of Turkish cuisine but also a part of the Ottoman Empire’s country affairs as this sweet pride became the hero of a country ceremony. The lifestyle of “The Baklava Procession,” which emerged in the late seventeenth or early 18th century, is the maximum distinguished example of this. In the center of the month of Ramadan, a baklava baker got here to the palace.
One baklava tray for every ten infantrymen becomes organized and lined up in the front of the imperial kitchen. After Silahtar Agha took delivery of the primary tray on behalf of the sultan, other janissaries took their trays and walked out inside the iciness month from the open doorways. The humans of Istanbul poured onto the streets to observe the baklava procession. This culture, which made baklava a symbol of the Ottoman reign, became history with the Janissaries.
