FESTIVE GOODIES

This holiday season I have been enjoying making traditional sweets as well as some Turkish sweet dishes like pistachio sarma, kadayif and baklava. Also made selection of Turkish delights which was nice to give away as gifts to friends.

I enjoyed making little meringue nests with chocolate chips and flaked almond in them, they were delicious. I will be giving you the recipe in the new year for you to try them.

FIGS filled with walnuts, dipped in honey or maple syrup then rolled in roasted sesame seeds.

APRICOTS filled with whole almonds and rolled in sheared coconut flakes.

DATES filled with pistachios and almonds rolled in crushed pistachios.

CHOCOLATE AND DRIED FRUIT SWEET MINCE PIES WITH BRANDY

HI ALL, Merry Xmas and a very HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all. This festive season I enjoyed trying different recipes and yummy foods with my family and friends. One of the new things I made this year was "chocolate and fruit sweet mince pies". Personally I have not been so fond of jars of sweet mince mixture for making pies. I found them too sweet and also not so keen of suet that they add into it.

This year, I chopped up some dried apricots, figs, dates, prunes, sultanas and walnut together in a bowl with some cranberry sauce. Added splash of brandy and mixed it well. Instead of sugar I used some maple syrup and some spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Grated some %70 coco dark chocolate to the mixture( which i got the idea from a TV show for the chocolate ). It was a lovely mixture and the result was very good indeed. Didn't need to add any oil or fat to the mixture because of the coco butter in the chocolate. Using shortcrust pastry, I baked the pies with this filling and sprinkled icing sugar before serving. Everyone loved the pies and it was a change from the traditional sweet mince pies.

NOT: Can be served cold or warm with cream or custard.

QUINCE JAM - AYVA RECELI

In my opinion, quince jam is one of the nicest jams of all. Today I used 3 large quinces, diced into small pieces, sugar,lemon juice and cloves for that extra special taste.. I included the seeds of the quinces to get a lovely dark pinkish colour as seen above.

First wash and peel the quinces then cut them in to small pieces. Place them into a deep pan with 4 cups of water and juice of a lemon. Prepare a muslin bag with 6-7 cloves and the pips from the quinces, tie and drop it into the pan. Bring it to boil. Boil the quinces for 5 minutes then add 1 cup of sugar. Boil it for 10 minutes and then add the second cup of sugar, boil for 10 minutes. Then add the last cup of sugar ( 3 cups of sugar in total ) and boil until it just starts to thicken. After about 30 minutes in total your jam will be ready . Cool it for 5 minutes before transferring the jam into sterilized jar.