1st Recipe! Turkish Delight!

I haven't yet found a good recipe sans gelatine (the last one i made without it was wayyyyy too soft).

You Need:

2 Cups Sugar (I use brown sugar for the molasses)

1 Cup Water

3 Envelopes of Gelatin

1/8 Teaspoon Salt

1 Tablespoon flavouring (essence etc)

Nuts (optional)

Icing sugar

A lot of recipes for turkish delight talk about soft ball stage or certain temperatures and candy thermometers etc....something not a lot of people know about or have.
The following method was basically common sense? i guess? But i made it over 3 times and it works!!


Prepare 8 inch pan by lining with foil (bottom and sides with one piece) and coating lightly with oil or you can spray pam on it. This is to make it easy to come out of the pan and also make it easier to remove from the foil.

Mix gelatin, sugar & salt in heavy pot over low heat constantly until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Add the water.

Bring to a slow boil (leave it to boil/bubble for a few mins, 3 or 4 max).

Simmer without stirring for 10 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in flavouring.

Pour into 8 inch pan very quickly as it dries in seconds.

Chill uncovered until firm (best is overnight but i'm not very patient so i just wait until it is completely cool and firm.

When ready, remove foil and with a sharp knife cut into 1 inch squares or smaller.

In a bowl with a fair amount of icing sugar, roll the squares one by one until completely coated with a lot of icing sugar!

Place in airtight container lined on the bottom with waxed paper, each layer separated by wax paper.

They do not keep very long so make sure to consume within 5 days or else they will get a bit firmer than you would want to eat :|


I use slivered almonds instead of the typical pistachios (you can use any chopped nut you like), be aware that they tend to float to the top when you pour the turkish delight liquid from the pot into the pan.
I also used Angostura Orange Bitters (a new version to the original Angostura Bitters...a product of Trinidad available world wide) to give it a very authentic and distinct orange flavour. It tastes like ORANGE....REAL orange. Typical and traditional turkish delight uses rose water...some people even put orange juice :s

Angostura Orange Bitters

Second batch (not all had fit in the container), usually looks super powdery with all the icing sugar but i was impatient with this one and it wasn't cool enough so it basically absorbed most of the icing sugar. *sigh

I hope you all enjoy this recipe. It makes a zillionnn pieces, as 1 inch squares but you can cut them smaller.

xx