“Şekerpare” translates as “piece of sweet” to English, I find it a lovely name for a dessert. This is again a very common dessert made in Turkish homes and restaurants. It is easy to make, so both cooks and kids like it.
It is also a two sided recipe. You can skip preparing the syrup and eat or serve what you bake as a cookie or pour syrup on top to serve as a dessert.
The trick about Turkish desserts that require syrup is that you have to have one of them warm, and the other cold. So you either have warm syrup and cooled cookies or vise versa. In real life, generally the cookies are warm.
There are other things about this recipe that you can play around with. You will notice that I have put almonds on the top of the cookies. You can replace these with nuts.. You can replace equal amount of flour with 2 table spoons of coconut powder and/or 4 tablespoons of semolina for additional flavor.
The good thing about this recipe is that it makes only about 16 cookies. So you will not have to eat too much, if you are on a life time weight-watcher like I am.
I hope you agree that they do look and taste great. Enjoy.
Piece of Sweet Dessert / Şekerpare
Ingredients
Cookie
- 500 grams flour
- 2 egg
- 100 grams powdered sugar
- 100 grams butter or margarine
- 10 grams baking powder
- 10 grams vanilla powder
- 17 nuts or similar
Syrup
- 350 grams sugar
- 400 millilitres water
- 1 teaspoon lemon’s juice
Instructions
Syrup
- Start with the syrup, as it will need time to cool.
- Put the sugar in a pot. Add the water and cook to boil. Mix to dissolve the sugar before the water comes to boil.
- After the water boils, add a teaspoon of lemon juice to the syrup.
- Let simmer for 5 more minutes and remove from heat. Set aside to cool. You can prepare the syrup earlier in the day or the previous day.
Cookies
- Melt the butter/margarine and set aside to cool.
- Break one of the eggs in a large mixing bowl and add 100 grams of powdered sugar. Mix well with a whisker.
- Then add the butter/margarine that is cooled by now. Mix for about 5 minutes again with a whisker.
- Sieve the vanilla, baking powder and the flour in a separate bowl. Add to the mixture slowly, while mixing with your hand. Knead to obtain a non-sticky dough.
- When the dough is not sticking to your fingers anymore try to make a small ball. If you can, it means your dough is ready.
- Then turn the dough into a large ball. Cover it with a paper towel and set aside for about 10 minutes.
- Now is a good time to start the oven so it heats up to 160° Celsius.
- Make small – walnut sized – balls from the dough and gently press to make the shape in the picture.
- Place all the cookies in an oven dish or tray. They should have room to expand, they should not touch each other.
- Place a nut or a peeled almond in the middle of each cookie, push it down slightly, so they do not pop out when baked.
- Separate the second egg’s yolk and whisk it. Gently brush the top of each ball with this egg yolk to make them brighter when in the oven.
- They should have room to expand, they should not touch each other. You should obtain about 16 cookies.
- Cook for about 20 minutes until they are golden on top and bottom. Your cookies are ready, it is upto you to eat or serve them as cookies, if you want to have a dessert please continue.
Dessert
- The trick about the syrup is that the cookies should be warm and the syrup should be cold.
- As soon as you take out the cookies from the oven put them in a deep serving dish and pour all the syrup on top. Be generous with the syrup, the cookies will soak it up quickly. Cover your serving dish with a tray until serving.