A Queen, A Blogger and A White Witch
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Some of you may recall that last December I partnered with Sarah over at yesandyes.org to help her knock bread baking off her annual bucket list. Last week I had the pleasure of hosting Sarah in my home while we attempted to make Turkish Delight.
What's that you ask?
Well for the uncool kids who never got to read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe or watch the bitchin' 1979 cartoon version that knocks all other versions out of the water...turkish delight is the confection that the evil White Witch uses to seal the deal with Edmund to sell out his siblings. Edmund has serious middle sibling issues. Trust me, if I was in Edmunds place I would have held out for a Whatchamacallit. Those candy bars are worth saying "sayonara" to the sibs for.
Long story short. Sarah showed up. I was mildly unprepared. And let's face it, the two of us have way too much to talk about to pay attention to anything as important as boiling sugar (namely men and crap we do with them). Turkish Delight was a failure. Please see Sarah's take on the process here.
However...I tried again! And it was a success! At least visually. I have yet to actually bite into them. And what did I do different this time? Well folks there is this thing called technology. And long ago we didn't have it. We used to take temperatures of boiling things with mercury thermometers. Then we decided that mercury was a bad thing (even though we used to roll it around in our hands for fun). After that we smartened up to non mercury thermometers. And most recently in our 21st century digital thermometers have taken over. Initially I thought "holy crap! now I can set it and forget it!" I know all you rockin' to the oldies folks remember that classic.
But sadly you cannot just "set it and forget it". While Sarah and I caught up on all the juicy details of our sordid lives I failed to notice the new fancy e-lec-tron-ic thermometer was actually set to CELSIUS. That damned temperature rating from all other countries. So while I thought we were taking our sweet time getting to the right temperature, in reality, I was deep frying our sugar. Lesson learned.
I promise to follow up with pictures of the "good" turkish delight when I get around to cutting into them. Until then please live with wild abandon in your own kitchens and dig out your grandma's candy thermometer.