Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [54]
5. Bake for 30 minutes, until golden. Let cool completely on a rack.
6. If frosting the tarts, in a small bowl, mix the confectioners’ sugar with the milk, vanilla, and food coloring (if using) to make a thick, smooth, spreadable frosting. Frost the tarts. These are best eaten immediately, though you can store them at room temperature for up to five days in a cookie tin. You can toast these in a regular pop-up toaster, but some of the frosting will melt and drip into your toaster. Better to use a toaster oven, if you have one, or an ordinary oven.
Makes 10 to 12 Pop-Tarts
TURKISH DELIGHT
In the neighborhood where I grew up, there’s a spice shop called Haig’s that has been there as long as I can remember and has always smelled exactly the same, like cumin and coriander and coffee. My mother used to take me there to buy coffee beans from a large, bespectacled man with a bald head like an egg. The old man is gone, as is my mother, but I stop at Haig’s every time I’m in the neighborhood. There is never a crowd, never more than one or two other people in the shop, and I dread the day I find Haig’s has gone out of business, because I always discover something odd and marvelous there—dried Persian lemons; canned spotted dick from Great Britain; a 1956 paperback copy of Indian Cookery by E. P. Veerasawmy which, according to the jacket copy, “should be an important part of any cook-proud housewife’s library” and is now a treasured part of mine. You can buy blade mace, which looks like the shavings from a sharpened pencil, or split, peeled fava beans, or fresh halvah. I never leave without buying something and I always, always buy a chunk of the Supreme Turkish delight, which is sold from a big jar on the counter. The pistachios are the bricks, the rose-flavored jelly is the mortar, and I eat it out of the little white sack while walking down the street back to my car. It scatters confectioners’ sugar on my fingers and is probably ruining my teeth, but it is too good to resist. If I go into Haig’s feeling blue, I come out thinking the world is a big and strange place full of mysterious, rose-scented pleasures, like Turkish delight.
One day, in the throes of my self-sufficiency, I tried to make Turkish delight by simmering a paste of cornstarch, water, and gelatin for an hour. I could not believe how cheap it was going to be! No more would I pay $13 per pound for Supreme Turkish delight from Haig’s. I flavored this translucent goo with rosewater, poured in a big handful of pistachios, spread it in a brownie pan, cut it in cubes, and tossed it in sifted confectioners’ sugar.
It was gummy and smelled like air freshener.
I collected more recipes from the Internet and planned to continue my quest, and then I asked myself: Why was I boiling cornstarch and gelatin when I could go to Haig’s and buy myself a piece—or a pound!—of perfect Turkish delight made by someone who actually knew how to make Turkish delight? What will happen to the expert makers of Turkish delight if people like me stop buying their product? What will happen to Haig’s? And where else can I buy a Syrian coffeepot, a jar of Indian lime pickle, or black Dutch licorice?
I quit trying to make Turkish delight.
MARSHMALLOWS
Like most Americans, I grew up thinking a marshmallow was a stiff, eraser-like confection, nominally edible, used in school construction projects involving toothpicks or dropped in hot chocolate. Neither candy nor cookie, a marshmallow was a gummy droid, entirely artificial and not all that enticing. My kids used to eat them only when there was nothing sweet left in the cupboard except raisins. To concoct a marshmallow at home seemed impossible. And to concoct at