The Kitchen of Oz - A Food Blog » cinnamon

Fritters in Honey Syrup

Ozhan — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 07:19:52 +0000

Have you ever find yourself in a situation which you have plenty of something but do not know what to do with it? I am not talking about work to be done or your overflowing “to do” list but a more tangible or let me say “edible” stuff. I felt this way some weeks before when my sister came up with a whole big honey comb sent by one of her grateful patients who was a beekeeper. Comb was full of insanely delicious wildflower honey derived from the nectar of many types of flowers with intense flavor. It was the purest honey I have ever tasted up to now and good part is that I had lots of it.

You can distinguish a high quality honey by its consistency and taste. A good quality honey should have less water content making it denser. Most common test is to pour a small amount of honey into a glass of water and observe what happens. If it dissolves easily in water than your honey is most probably diluted but if it settles at the bottom and form a lump it has a higher chance to be pure. A genuine honey has a more distinct taste compared to the ones blended with corn syrup or other artificial sweeteners. As for the color; there are three categories: light, amber and dark. The darker it gets the more mineral content it has; however color is not a direct indicator of quality. Some producers add molasses to make honey look darker but anyone with a fair gustatory sense might easily tell the difference.

Sitting in front of a big chunk of wildflower honey, I started to think about recipes that might be done with it and suddenly the taste of a toothsome dessert revived on my palate, fritters in honey syrup.

This is a traditional recipe from Aegean side of Turkey; however you’ll come across with its variations in Greece and Middle East too. It is a doughnut like dessert called “Lokma” in Turkish which means “bite”. In Greece they call it as Lokmades. Even though the batter looks like simple yeast dough, ending up with the right consistency to form a sphere like shape in the frying pan is quite difficult. I prepared the same batter with different amount of ingredients six times and one thing was common among all, they all failed! I was about to give up and carry on with some other dessert but I couldn’t help giving one last chance. Voilà! Being stubborn like a goat finally rewarded at my seventh attempt; incredibly delicious fritters with crispy outer shells and soft inner parts as they were supposed to be.

If you do not have the right recipe in hand (my version turned out to be a good one after all my research and development efforts) most probably you will end up with a puffy and soft fritters soaked in frying oil but do not worry I won’t let you fail.

First of all, you should be very careful about not overmixing the batter. If you overmix, gluten will develop in the batter and you will end up with bread like fibred texture and a soft outer shell, with almost no crispness. Another important point is to make your syrup ready and to cool it down to room temperature before you start frying.

For the syrup I used honey and sugar combination and also add cardamom seeds, a few cloves and another must have: cinnamon stick, to end up with an enriched flavor. Normally syrup should be plain but I am so happy with the result that I can honestly claim that this is an improved version of a traditional dessert. So get ready to spice up!

Ingredients (makes 8 servings)
For the batter

200ml (6.76 fl. oz) warm water
280g (9.87 oz) all purpose flour
4 tablespoons liquid vegetable oil + 2cups for frying
1 egg
1 teaspoon instant dry yeast
1 teaspoon confectioners’ sugar
A pinch of salt

For the syrup

1 ⅓ cup water
1 cup granulated sugar
⅓ cup good quality honey
Zest of one lemon
10 cardamom seeds
2 cloves
2 cinnamon sticks

Instructions

1.	Combine all ingredients for the syrup in a saucepan and boil until it thickens. (Around 10 minutes).
2.	Strain syrup into a bowl and cool it down to room temperature.
3.	Combine dry ingredients (flour, instant yeast, salt, confectioners’ sugar) in a bowl and blend.
4.	Mix warm water, oil and egg in another bowl and then pour on the dry ingredients.
5.	Mix with a fork until they are roughly combined and form a soft batter. Pay attention not to overmix.
6.	Cover with a stretch film and keep it in a warm place for about 2 hours or until the batter doubles in volume. You will end up with a soft and sticky batter.
7.	Pour 2 cups of vegetable oil in a frying pan and place on high heat. When the oil becomes hot enough for frying turn the level of heat to normal.
8.	Immerse a small spoon in hot oil and take a small piece of batter with it. Then quickly leave it in the frying pan by paying attention not to elongate the batter. You may completely submerge the batter in frying oil which will help you to make round shaped fritters. Do not panic if first few fritters end up with a strange shape, you will progress on the second round.
9.	Fry both side of the fritters until they gain a golden color (A few minutes).
10.	Take fritters out of the pan and directly throw into cold syrup. Mix with a slotted spoon for a few seconds and transfer to a serving plate. Serve immediately while they are still warm, you may sprinkle more cinnamon according to your preference.

Sponge Cake with Apple Filling

Ozhan — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:30:46 +0000

Have you ever participated in a race even if you know that you won’t be the winner? For me, the answer is definitely “Yes!” and I should admit not just for once. Good part is that it provides the opportunity to maximize the fun you will get out of it without pushing yourself too hard. Considering the norms of modern life dictating us to compete with others, to win over, to become invincible with all similar “Impossible is nothing!” like mottos flying all over, sometimes it is relaxing to have “Enjoying is everything” attitude.

Such sort of thoughts was wandering in my mind when we set off for our trip at dawn to join the Anatolian ski marathon a week before. I knew that I was not about to complete almost 40km racetrack but with snow covered hills and magnificent trees spread all over the place, I was was going to have a good time, fur sure. Did I mention the ultrahigh oxygen level? Believe it or not even inhaling this fresh air is worth waking up at 05:00 am.

We had to carry all our equipment: our very tall and narrow cross country skis, boots, poles, garments and no need to say lots of energizing food stuff to recharge our bodies during a cold day in the mountain full of physical activities. If you could see us, you would probably think that we decided to move in to a cave at the mountain top and to live there for the rest of our lives. Particularly food was the leading item we exaggerated a bit too much. I cannot give you a proper list but from little savoury snacks to mini muffins, sponge cake to orange cookies, dried fruits to bananas, we had almost everything as if we were running away from a hurricane and there was no coming back home!

The snow flake shaped sponge cake was the big hit of the day with its soft texture and delightful apple filling inside. It is not difficult to bake but takes some time to decorate the top, if you want it to be a little fancy like I do.

Sponge cake itself is based on a classical English recipe, however, there is no rule for inner filling. I wanted to use cooked apples and cinnamon but you might use other ingredients: raspberries and heavy cream, chocolate ganache and banana, apricot purée or your favourite jam, you name it.

There is no trick in baking this cake, so as long as you follow the below mentioned steps you won’t fail. Few things you should pay attention are:

make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature, and
do not over mix while folding the dry ingredients into egg mixture. (This is all about chemistry of baking which I will tell you in another post.)

Now, I know that you wonder what happened at the end, so here comes the results: I can honestly tell you that I managed to ski around 8,5 km. That was far better than last year, taking into account the very steep hill I managed to climb twice on my skis instead of other entrants sliding back towards me. A scary moment!

As a result, I was not able to complete the marathon but still felt like a winner. After all it was the day of taking easy, the day of no rush and no push. I remembered once more that life has lots of good things to offer for ones who can slow down for a while and enjoy the moment by getting rid of their ambitions. So, sometimes losing the game might be pleasant like a piece of cake. Just enjoy!

Ingredients (makes 6 servings)

For sponge cake
Following combination ends up with a batter to fill almost ¾ of a silicon mold which has a total volume of 800ml, you may increase the ingredients by keeping the ratios if you are using a larger mold)

120 g (4.2 oz) unsalted butter (cubed)
120 g (4.2 oz) sugar
120 g (4.2 oz) all purpose flour
2 large eggs (lightly beaten)
1 1/3 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
A pinch of salt

For Apple Filling

2 mid-sized green apples (grated)
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons lemon juice

For Icing (optional)

25 g (0.87 oz) labne cheese
10 g (0.35 oz) confectioner’s sugar
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Instructions

For sponge cake

1.	Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F).
2.	Beat well the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until fluffy and pale, add vanilla extract while beating.
3.	Add eggs little at a time while mixing, if the mixture begins to curdle 1-2 tablespoon of the flour.
4.	Add eggs little at a time while mixing, if the mixture begins to curdle 1-2 tablespoon of the flour.
5.	Sift the flour and combine with baking powder and salt then fold into the egg mixture using a spatula. Do not overmix, when all the ingredients are incorporated that means it’s done.
6.	Grease your silicon mold generously if the mold has some patterns on it (like the snowflake pattern on the one I used) and pour in the batter.
7.	Bake for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean then cool on a wire rack.

For Apple Filling

1.	Transfer the grated apples into a small saucepan set over medium heat.
2.	Add sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice.
3.	Stir frequently until the apples are cooked and get a translucent brown color.
4.	Keep aside to cool.

For Icing (optional)

1.	Whisk the labne cheese with confectioner’s sugar and lemon juice until it has a creamy and smooth texture you may add a little water if you cannot reach the right consistency.

For the whole cake

1.	Cut the cake into two layers and spread the apple filling on the bottom layer.
2.	Place the upper piece and press lightly to merge.
3.	If you like you can decorate your cake with the icing mentioned above.

New Year Cookie

Ozhan — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 07:13:12 +0000

In the previous post I promised you to share my New Year cookie recipe and just to keep my promise I am writing down this post under difficult conditions. Weather is cold outside in Istanbul and I realized that I forgot my key at home during the morning rush. Now I am sitting at a small cafe’ in the neighborhood where they cannot even make a cup of tea properly. A strange young couple is sitting next to me and continuously making a nonsense conversation ranging from their awful jobs to adverse effects of tooth whitening products, preventing me from concentrating on my post. Anyhow, promise is promise, so I will do my best.

When I started to look for a cookie recipe more than a week before then, I wanted it to be homely but fancy enough to remind the New Year, to have a crispy texture but not too brittle, to leave some flavor on the tongue but not too spicy, and so on. It was a trial and error process to find the right combination of ingredients for a tasty recipe. After too many batches and numerous pieces of cookies, some without enough ginger, some with too much cinnamon, some overcooked, some not enough cooked, I suddenly realized that I was asking way too much from a cookie just because it was for the New Year.

I guess most of us have a tendency to attach a lot importance to New Year related stuff. Like my high expectations from these little cookies, we all look out this brand new year to bring all the goodness we long for. Probably within the group of people who read this post, seventy percent want to leave their jobs for a better opportunity in the coming year or at least to get promoted in the same place, forty percent hope to find their significant other to share their lives, thirty percent expect to find the courage to put an end to their going nowhere relationships, sixty percent aimed to lose ten pounds they gained within the stressful 2009 that made them eat more than usual (shame on 2009!), and the list goes on and on…

Putting the perfect New Year’s cookie aside, I have also a new year’s resolution about this blog. I really want it to share with more and more people in 2010 to touch their life at some point, to make them feel good with my stories and to convince them to try something new in the cozy atmosphere of their kitchens. We all can do anything, no matter how fancy or how difficult it is. It’s all about trying and retrying just like all other things in our lives.

Hoping that all of us get what we are looking for in 2010, below I wrote down the recipe of my new year cookies for those looking for one. If you start with the same amount of ingredients you will end up with too many cookies to share with your beloved ones so that the sweet taste of cookies lingers in their mouths throughout the year.

A happy new year from the Kitchen of Oz!

Ingredients (makes around 80-120 pieces depending on the cookie cutter size and cookie thickness)
For cookie dough

1 cup (227 g / 8 oz) butter
3/4 cup (160 g/ 5,6 oz)sugar
2 large eggs (at room temperature)
2 +3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup corn starch
4 teaspoons ground ginger
1+1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt

For royal icing (optional, if you do not want to decorate the cookie you may skip this part)

1+ 3/8 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 egg white
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Food coloring according to your preference

Instructions
For cookie

1.	With a stand mixer with paddle attachment beat butter and sugar until the mixture is creamy. Add two eggs and mix well.
2.	In another bowl combine flour, corn starch, ground ginger, cinnamon and salt.
3.	Gradually add combined dry ingredients into the creamy mixture you prepared and keep on mixing till you end up with a dough (if you do not have a stand mixer, knead by your hands but make sure that all the ingredients are well blended to form a dough).
4.	Wrap dough tightly with a plastic wrap, and chill for at least 2 hours or preferably overnight.
5.	Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F).
6.	Divide dough into two, and keep half in refrigerator. On a lightly floured surface, roll the remaining half into a circle with 3 mm. (1/8 inch) thickness (the thinner the dough, the crispier the cookies).
7.	Cut with a cookie cutter you like (if cookie cutter sticks to dough, dip cutters in flour)
8.	Take the cutout cookies to an ungreased baking sheet and bake in the oven for 10 minutes or until they gain a golden color. Remove, and cool cookies on a rack.
9.	Repeat the same for the other half (another hint: if dough warms up quickly while you are cutting out and shapes are not that good, you might try to divide dough into four pieces at the beginning and work on a quarter each time while you keep the rest in refrigerator)

For royal icing (optional, if you do not want to decorate the cookie you may skip this part)

1.	Beat the egg white with lemon juice with an electric mixer.
2.	Add confectioner’s sugar and keep on mixing at low speed till the texture is smooth. Consistency should be neither too stiff nor too runny. Test it on a piece of cookie and if it is too runny gradually add a little confectioner’s sugar. Instead if it is too stiff gradually add water and mix well.
3.	According to number of colors you will use for decoration, distribute the icing into different bowls. Add food coloring to each one until you obtain the color you like and mix well.
4.	Decorate your cookies with colored icings you prepared and keep in mind that it will take several hours for the icing to completely dry.