Canım Benim

You’ve gotta love ‘Türk Tatlıları’. Turkish sweets, like honey-and-nuts-baklava cut into little golden pieces or those colourful Turkish Delight cubes with aroma’s of roses, mint and orange. Displayed like jewelry on a silver plate they flirt with anyone who passes a patisserie. Served with a small glass of nice and strong black tea or a tiny cup of ‘Türk Kahvesi’ they can bring your sugar level from zero to one hundred within a few bites. Not very healthy but irresistible. Just make sure you drink a big glass of water along with it. Maybe this is the point where I should admit that I have a weak spot for anything sweet and delicious. But even though I love to discover all these fantastic sweets that Turkey has to offer, I sometimes would love to trade all these stuffed, sticky pastries for a good old classical muffin. My favourite is plain or filled with blueberries. They are mild and soft and just the right size to eat cake for breakfast without a bad conscious. Or enjoy them with some really good coffee in the afternoon. It’s a pity that American Bakery is hard to find around here. But in order not to crave what you can’t have, I decided to make some myself. I went online to check if domestic goddess Nigella Lawson (who I can watch for hours) would have some good recipe.  And Nigella wouldn’t be the Calorie-Fearless Cooking Queen that she is if she wouldn’t have come up with this one: Bakalava Muffins! How great is that! The best of American Bakery and Turkish sweets combined! Of course I had to try it.

So here we go:

BAKLAVA MUFFINS

For 6 big muffins (but I got 10 out of it)

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

For the filling:
-          100 gr of chopped walnuts
-          75 gr brown sugar
-          1,5 tbl spoon of cinnamon
-          45 gr unsalted butter, melted
-          a little salt

For the muffins:
-          210 gr plain flower
-          2 big tbl spoons of baking powder
-          75 gr cristal sugar
-          1 big egg
-          45 gr unsalted butter, melted
-          1,75 dl yoghurt
-          0,75 dl milk
-          a little salt

Honey for the finishing touch.

1) Mix all the ingredients for the filling.

2) Mix the flower, sugar, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. Mix the yoghurt, milk, egg and melted butter and give it a little stir. Add this mix to the dry ingredients and gently mix everything. Remember to do this very lightly, it doesn’t need to become super smooth this will make the muffins too heavy or compact.

3) Fill the muffin cups with 1/3 of the dough. Then add a layer of the walnut filling and cover with another layer of dough. Place the muffins in the oven for 15 minutes until they’re golden brown.
Let them cool off a little and sprinkle with honey before serving.

4) Enjoy!

Because 10 is just a few too many for the two of us, I brought them to the restaurants and had the guys try them. They are my test panel whenever I bake something. They love to try pretty much everything but still remain very critical since everything gets measured against the high, very hard to match standards of their mothers home cooking. Safe to say these baklava muffins passed the test and I even got a ‘ellerine sağlık’. I love that expression. It means ‘health to your hands’ and you can wish it someone who cooked or made something delicious.

If only there was a recipe  to combine cultural and political differences as joyfully as we do with the culinary ones.. surely the world would be a better, more delightful place to live in. And maybe we could come up with a special expression for someone who succeeded in doing so too. Maybe we would wish someone something like ‘sağduyuna sağlık’ (health to your common sense). I’m just saying.

Turkish Delight. by David Crowder Band
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aF7ibfbX_M