How to Make Kaymakli Kayisi

Female: Did you know that in Turkey, people drink tea more than coffee? Turkish tea is traditionally of the black varietal, served with sugar and tulip shaped glasses. It is the focal point of social gatherings and is assigned hospitality. In Reece, they hold the International Tea Festival every June. So the next time you’re in Turkey in June, check it out.

Jeniffer: So now, it’s time to make our delicious apricot dessert. Now what you're going to need for this is some dried apricots, about 250 grams or half a pound. Now what you’re going to so with these apricots is you’re going to put one cup of water and soak them overnight or for eight hours which I’ve actually done over here. And as you could see, they’re really nice and puffy. It’s got a great color and a nice texture to it. And with that, you’re going to make some syrup. Now the syrup, if you know me, you know how to make the syrup. It’s one cup of sugar, one cup of water, equal amounts.

Now what I like to do is to water that this has been soaking in. I like to pour it in and use that water, because it’s that much soother and it’s that much more flavorful.

So I already have that in our pot without rid on it to bring it to nice cooked really fast. And then we’ll make the inside. Now the inside is actually really easy. In Turkey, a lot of the time they use Kanma. Kanma is a delicious cream. They make ice cream out of it and so many different desserts but it’s really hard to find it here so we improvised.

What I do is I like to take about four ounces of regatta cheese, which is plain and I like to mix a little cinnamon and a little sugar in it. Now depending on how sweet you wanted, that’s how much you mix. So we put about a very light, say half of the tablespoon of sugar and then just little bit of cinnamon. We don’t want it too much because we don’t want too much of the strong taste, just a little splash.

And apricots are very famous all throughout Turkey. You could find so many different desserts made with them especially the dried ones. They actually come from the city called Malatya.

So you just want to mix this up. Now regatta cheese is also a clotted cream. It’s just need a little different and of course, the—.

So right here our water boiling over here. So I’m just going to add one cup of plain granulated sugar and then I’m going to add the apricots that have been soaking overnight.

We want to bring this to a boil for about 10 to 15 minutes. Now once that’s done, we’re going to take them and inside each one, we’re going to put little teaspoon of our cream, blanched olive, which you can find this at any grocery store and then we’re going to varnish with some crushed pistachios.

So once you see that these are nice and boiled, and you can tell because they start opening up. And that’s when you’re going to fill it in with the cream and the almond. So take them and just drain a few on a paper towel and I’ll show you how it’s done. And then you could do this at home for your friends and family or for yourself if you feel in the mood.

So now what we’re going to do is we’re going to fill up each apricot with just a little cream and a little almond. I like it when you could find them really nice and thin because it goes in easily, and then it gives you room to fill it up.

So I just want to open it. Put a little bit of the almond, a little bit of cream. And then we’re going to spoon over our syrup over it and then garnish with crushed pistachios, yum! Now I like to use my hands. It’s a little hot, so be careful at home. Something has got to give it a little tuck and then that opened. They open up really nice and soft, really soft.

So just continue doing this until they’re all done. So once you’re done, what you want to do is take your syrup. I know a great way to do this at home is you could wait until they’ve closed down to about room temperature. It’s probably a lot easier. You won’t burn your fingers. So you dress a little bit of that syrup, and then take some crushed pistachios. And this is just literally the icing on the cake. It’s such a sweet dessert, so mouth-watering, you’re going to lick with fingers. And this is best served at room temperature or you could just put it in a fridge before people come over, make sure that cream doesn’t go bad. It’s really delicious. You’re going to love it. I know the crew over here they can’t wait to eat it.

And this is our famous apricot dessert, famous all throughout Turkey. Yu can find at a lot of different Turkish Restaurants. And it’s like you saw, it’s very easy to make at home. So enjoy.