A recipe for OTTOMAN’S BROWNIES

Ingredients:

250g butter
180g semisweet chocolate
5 eggs

120g sugar
100g sugar (brown)
140g flour
½ teaspoon salt
100g lokum (Turkish Delight) (rose)
50g unsalted pistachios

For the topping:

couverture chocolate
chopped cranberries
chopped pistachios
dried rose petals

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 160 – 170°C. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat. Break up the chocolate and melt into the butter. Set this pot to the side when the mixture is liquefied.

Mix the sugar (brown and white) with the eggs for about 4 min with an electric mixer on the highest speed setting. Add the flour and the salt and combine at a slow speed until the flour is no longer visible.

Next, slowly add the cooled chocolate mixture to the sugar and eggs.

Finally, add the rose-flavoured lokum and the pistachios. Just mix enough so that they are folded into the batter.

Transfer the batter to a pan: ideally a flat rectangular pan (ca. 20 cm x 30 cm). Bake at 160 – 170°C for 30 min.

Ottoman’s Brownies are done when there is a thick, crusty layer on the top, and the inside is moist and sticky!! For those who would like to combine a sweet topic of conversation while eating sweet things, we will now recount the legend of the sultan who is to thank for lokum’s creation.

Lokum– the »Love-Booster« from the time of Sultans

As the legend goes…

…  500 years ago there lived a Sultan for whom love was more important than waging war. He gave all of the chefs and confectioners of his court the task of creating a delicacy that would sweeten up the day of all of the women in his harem. At the same time, he wanted a »Love-Booster« that would increase his virility. In order to grant the wish of the Sultan, the cooks and confectioners experimented with all kinds of ingredients. They mixed flour, honey, nuts and dried fruits and stirred and stirred and stirred until in the end a thick, glossy, shiny and sweet mixture was formed: Lokum.

There was much talk of the delicious flavour of this novelty in the time of the sultans, which made everyone curious. Lokum quickly became one of Turkey’s favourite sweets. In the eighteenth century, seafaring people brought it to Europe where it became known as Turkish Delight.

The complete and correct term for lokum is actually »Rahat Lokum«, which translated from Turkish means »comfortable snack«. To this day, the method for preparing Turkish Delight remains nearly unchanged. In those times, when sugar was not readily available, confectioners used honey or thickened grape juice instead of sugar and starch instead of flour.

Oh yes, and regarding the question if the »Love-Booster« really worked on the Sultan, we’ll leave that to your imagination. Fact: In colloquial language, lokum is known as »Turkish Viagra«. Whether or not that’s true, you can try it out for yourself.

5 Things that you should also perhaps know:

High quality Turkish Delight does not stick to teeth.
Even when one eats ten pieces of Turkish Delight, one will not be thirsty.
100 grams of Turkish Delight contains ca. 400 calories.
Turkish Delight is vegan, that is to say, purely plant-based.
Turkish Delight should not be stored in the refrigerator.

Credits:
Text and Photos: Serap Ademci