23 Turkish Desserts You Need to Try
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- 25 Jan 2022
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Turkish food mesmerizes with its composition while delighting with its flavor combinations. This certainly rings true in the sweeter side of this cuisine, with so many alluring, colorful, and sumptuous dishes to choose from.
Together, let’s unearth more than a few hidden gems on this truly unique culinary adventure, and see a totally different side to Turkish cooking through 23 of the country’s most popular desserts to try.
Turkish Desserts
1 – Sütlaç (Rice Pudding)
Rice pudding is arguably the most famous of the milk-based desserts in Turkish cuisine. Its core ingredients are milk, sugar, and rice, but its taste is traditionally elevated with cinnamon or vanilla. Renowned and loved for its smooth texture, if you’re trying this dessert at home, be sure to add a sprinkle of grated orange peel into the mixture.
Although this may not be the most common way to try this dessert, I personally like to add a spoonful of pomegranate to get a zestier flavor with each and every mouthful.
2 – Baklava
This infamous dessert comes with many questions; do you prefer it with pistachios or walnuts, homecooked or store made, dry or with extra syrup, or in the shape of a diamond or carrots? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Traditionally baklava is oven-baked, and consists of up to forty layers of delicate, translucent pastry, with a layer of pistachios or walnuts and butter. Once out of the oven, it is sizzled and soaked with a sweet traditional syrup.
Its preparation is so mesmeric in fact, if you get a chance to watch how it’s made, be sure to make it your next reel on Instagram!
3 – Sütlü Nuriye (Milky Nuriye)
Milky Nuriye is a guilt-free version of baklava. While keeping all the taste and ingredients of baklava, it is cooked with sugar-added milk instead of syrup. It’s softer, moist, and arguably lighter on the taste buds than baklava.
Therefore, while you can only eat two or three pieces of baklava in one go, due to its richness, I can assure you that you can and will have much more milky Nuriye! How is that not good news for a cheat day?
4 – Åžekerpare (Sugar Cookie)
Åžekerpare is a sweet treat adored by both kids and adults throughout Turkey. You only need to sink your teeth into one once, and you’ll instantly understand why.
This blissful almond and semolina cookie, soaked in syrup with a cute little nut or almond nestled on top, both looks beautiful and sounds idyllic. The syrup softens the cookie, and texturally it feels as though you’re eating a sumptuously soft mash of sugar, rather than a cookie.
It is one of the sweetest dishes in Turkish cuisine, and pairs perfectly with a dollop of cottage cream, which balances the sweetness of the sugar.
5 – AÅŸure (Noah’s Ark Pudding)
A commemorative dessert, it is believed that this is the dish Noah and his family prepared once Noah’s Ark docked on Mount Ararat. With their supplies severely depleted, they gathered what they had left, such as grains and fruit, and cooked these remaining ingredients together, in a simple and wholesome pudding.
A dish that Turks prepare with deep passion and pride, to this day the pudding is cooked to mark this occasion. While the ingredients used in aÅŸure vary from household to household, you will commonly find beans, chickpeas, chopped fruit, dried fruits, and nuts in this dish, which when cooked has a similar consistency to a thick, nutritious porridge.
Additionally, I love to add a generous pinch of cinnamon, pomegranate, and dried apricot to the pudding, giving each mouthful a little extra sharpness and spice. Read More…
