Sweet Fried Dough (Lokma)

Time flies by so fast that sometimes we cannot keep track of everything going on in our lives. One of those things that I have neglected to keep track of is Turkish Food Passion’s 1st and 2nd anniversaries! In the first week of April 2008, Turkish Food Passion came to life one of those mornings when I used to get up at 6:00 a.m. every day even on the weekends. As much as I like sleeping, I sometimes feel like it is a waste of time (especially naps) since I feel that I could be doing something productive instead of sleeping. In any case, this is how my blog started. This certainly is not the reason for starting Turkish Food Passion however it was a big motivator as weekend mornings would be reserved for blogging before my husband would wake up late in the morning.

Despite the fact that I have been unmindful of Turkish Food Passion’s 1st anniversary and almost forgetting the 2nd anniversary which has past by a month, I am actually elated by what has developed into a rather large collection of Turkish recipes. It has gone much further than what I initially intended for and has gotten more attention than I expected, therefore I would like to thank all of my readers. Whether you leave me a comment, send me an e-mail or if you just follow quietly from the sidelines, thank you so much. My blog would not be here if it were not for you and your support. Also, I would like to thank my husband who has supported me from the beginning and has encouraged me to continue blogging when I was overwhelmed with my work schedule during certain times and tried to quit blogging a couple times.

Having said that, having published 152 posts on Turkish Food Passion, I am almost embarrassed by the fact that my repertoire of recipes includes only four dessert recipes! Yes, I have decided to focus on desserts for a while to widen the dessert recipe selection. In general I am not a big dessert (except baklava and a few other syrupy desserts of course) person, hence the procrastination on making desserts. If I do not have dessert for months, I would probably not ask for it, however when it is available I cannot stop eating it. Now that I have explained the reasons behind not making desserts often, I thought it is a good idea to celebrate Turkish Food Passion’s anniversary with a dessert recipe called ‘lokma’ which actually means ‘bite’.

Lokma is a bite-sized fried dough soaked in syrup that is prevalent throughout Turkey. This recipe was given to me by my lovely mother who almost made it for us when she was visiting this winter. Since we did not spend most of our time in the kitchen, I made sure to write down the recipe instead. Today being Mothers Day, I thought this is also another good occasion to publish this recipe. So, to all the moms in the world, happy Mothers Day!

Warning: These bite-sized pieces are addictive as they are crunchy and sweet. If you leave them out in the open, you will find yourself grabbing a few each time you pass by. It’s proven!

1 cup flour
½ tbsp corn starch
1 tsp dry yeast
1 cup water

For Syrup:

2.5 cups water
2.5 cups sugar
Juice of ½ lemon

For Frying:

2 cups canola oil

In a pot, add water and sugar and bring to a boil. Add the lemon juice and simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and cool.

Sift the flour, corn starch and yeast. Either using a mixer or by a wooden spoon, knead the ingredients after adding water until the dough is runny.

Let it sit for 1 hour.

Heat the oil in a frying pan. Place dough in your hand and close hand. Squirt the dough from the top of your hand and with the tip of a greased dessert spoon remove the dough from hand and place in the hot oil. This step has to be completed very quickly so that all the lokmas cook around the same time. Repeat until the pan is full of small pieces of dough.

As they fry, turn them over until all sides are golden brown.

Remove from oil and place in cold syrup. Let it sit in cold syrup for 5-10 minutes. It goes well with either coffee or hot tea. Enjoy!

Labels: Desserts