Sweets

i.Beyond Lokum and Baklava

The sweets most foreigners associate with Turkish cuisine are lokum — Turkish delight — and baklava, and the impression most visitors carry away is that these are the typical desserts at the end of a meal. They are not. The family of Turkish desserts is far richer than those two alone, and neither is, by tradition, an after-dinner sweet. Baklava and its many relatives are usually eaten with coffee, as an afternoon snack, or after a kebap meal — not at the close of an evening at home.

ii.Fresh Fruit: The Everyday Dessert

By far the most common dessert after a meal is fresh seasonal fruit — and Turkish fruit, given the country's sunshine and traditional cultivation, has a flavour that is its own argument. Spring opens with strawberries, then cherries, then apricots. Summer brings peaches, watermelons, melons. All kinds of grapes ripen in late summer, followed by green and purple figs, plums, apples, pears, quince. Winter belongs to oranges, mandarins, and bananas.

Through most of spring and summer the fruit is eaten fresh. Later in the year it is served fresh or dried, made into compotes, or preserved as jam. A few Turkish preserves stand out as uniquely the country's own: quince marmalade, sour-cherry preserve, and rose-petal preserve — which, as the name suggests, is made not from a fruit but from rose petals.

iii.Milk Desserts: The Muhallebi Family

Perhaps the most wonderful contribution Türkiye has made to the world of desserts — and the one casual visitors most easily miss — is the family of milk puddings called muhallebi. These are among the rare virtually guilt-free puddings: made with starch and rice flour, traditionally without eggs or butter. When the occasion calls for an even lighter close, the milk itself is omitted and the pudding flavoured instead with citrus — lemon, orange.

The muhallebi range runs from very light, subtle versions perfumed with rose water to the remarkable tavuk göğsü — a milk pudding made with fine strands of poached chicken breast, whose delicate texture surprises everyone tasting it for the first time. The shop where these are sold is a muhallebici, and any town in the country has at least one.

iv.The Baklava Family and the Lokma Cousins

The baked pastries are the baklava family. Paper-thin yufka sheets are brushed with butter and folded, layered, or rolled around a filling of ground pistachios, walnuts, or kaymak (clotted cream), then baked. Rich syrup is poured over the finished pastries while they are still warm. The many varieties — Sultan, Nightingale's Nest, Twisted Turban — differ in the amount and placement of nuts, the size and shape of each piece, and the dryness of the final cut.

The lokma family is its sister tradition: soft pieces of yeast dough fried in oil and dipped, hot, into syrup. Lady's Lips, Lady's Navel, Vizier's Finger — the names alone are a small literature.

v.Helva and the Winter Conversations

Helva is made by sautéing flour or semolina, with pine nuts, in butter, then adding sugar and water and cooking briefly until the liquid is absorbed. The preparation lends itself to communal cooking — friends and neighbours are invited for helva sohbeti, "helva conversations," to pass the long winter nights. The familiar tahini helva sold in pressed blocks at corner shops is a different preparation altogether, and a different pleasure.

vi.Ekmek Kadayıfı: The Queen of Desserts

One dessert deserves its own chapter. Ekmek kadayıfı — a special bread soaked in sweet syrup, topped generously with walnuts and a thick blanket of kaymak — is, by long agreement, the queen of all Turkish desserts. If you find yourself driving the Ankara–İzmir road, plan a stop at the historic İkbal Lokantası in Afyonkarahisar — a restaurant founded in 1922 and famous across the country for its version of this dish, made with local water-buffalo kaymak.

A special bread soaked in sweet syrup, topped generously with walnuts and a thick blanket of kaymak. Arguably the queen of all Turkish desserts.

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