Lokum or rahat lokum is worldwide known Turkish delight. This dish came to Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Ottoman period and has become one of the traditional pastries.
In translation from the Turkish language “rahat al-hulkum†means „pleasure in the throatâ€, and this sweet pastry came from the Persian sweet meal ahbisa (sweet jelly). What is the traditional recipe for making rahat lokum?
Boil together sugar, lemon juice and half a liter of water. Then remove the foam and gently boil everything for 15 minutes. Gradually add a liter of cold water into the potato starch and stir the mixture constantly.
When the sugar is cooked, add the boiling diluted starch and continue to stir together with a spoon until the mixture falls from the spoon. Then take off all from the stove and add the peeled and chopped almonds, attar and stir again together.
After that rub the pan with oil and fill it with the hot mixture from the stove and leave it to cool off over night. The second day, place vanilla sugar on the kitchen board and place on it the rahat lokum from the pan. Then take a knife previously dipped in water and cut the rahat lokum into dice. At the end sprinkle more vanilla sugar all over.
This sweet dish originates from Turkey, from the 15th century. Rahat lokum as we know it today was made first in 1777 in Istanbul by Haji Bećir (who had a great pastry shop), and has been popularized very much in the Western world during the 19th century. In Bosnia and Herzegovina it is consumed with coffee.
Today premium and popular varieties of the rahat lokum consist largely of flavors with chopped dates, pistachios, and hazelnuts or walnuts while traditional varieties are mostly flavored with rosewater, mastic, Bergamot orange, or lemon. The confection is often packaged and eaten in small cubes dusted with icing sugar, copra, or powdered cream of tartar, to prevent clinging. Other common flavors include cinnamon and mint. In the production process, soapwort may be used as an emulsifying additive.
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