This baking attempt stemmed from wanting to use the sad, softened apples sitting around on the kitchen counter. Personally, I HATE soft, bruised apples. I'm just very picky about how I like my apples, sorry! Anyway, while I was in Turkey for the summer, I had the pleasure of eating some elma kurabiye (literally translated it means "apple cookie") that was given by a neighbor. I loved it! Especially because I'm not the type of person to like baked apples or any type of apple in my desert. I looked up a recipe that was quite popular and highly reviewed by members of a very well known Turkish recipe website: Nefis Yemek Tarifleri. This is my attempt:
My first mistake was starting the recipe before checking to see if I actually had all of the ingredients. I think I was too confident before I even started because the recipe looked so simple and fool-proof. Oh, sadly I was very wrong. I started making the apple filling before making the dough- mistake number two. I peeled and grated the apples, then cooked them on the stove until the juice of the apple was re-absorbed. Then, I added the sugar and cinnamon mix before removing the pan to cool down. Next, I started on making the dough. So. Many. Mistakes. I put the correct amounts of olive oil, yogurt, eggs, milk, and sugar. But because I didn't check my ingredients before-hand (such an amateur move), I didn't realize I didn't have regular, white flour or vanilla powder. So I had to make do. I used the wrong quantity of whole wheat flour and vanilla extract in the pantry. As you can tell, the result was terrible. The dough became too dry to combine and even harder to roll out into shapes. After a worthless attempt at trying to make the dough combine, I thickly rolled out the dough, cut out circle shaped pieces, and added one spoonful of apple cinnamon sugar mix. Then, I pinched up two sides of the dough to make a taco-like shape.
It was at this point through the preparation that I realized I never pre-heated the oven.
Halfway through the prep, I finally turned the oven on to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and continued with the rest of the cookies. I placed the cookies onto a baking sheet and placed them in the oven for about fifteen minutes, then took them out to cool. At this point, I've lost track of all the mistakes I've made but once again, I failed to realize the absence of powdered sugar from my pantry. So I unfortunately served this cookies without the sprinkling of powdered sugar it needed.
Even though I made waaaay too many mistakes, the cookies still turned out to be edible. Did they taste excatly like the ones I ate in Turkey? No. Was it even remotely close in taste? No. Will I attempt this recipe again while making sure I have all the right ingredients? Yes!
For some weird reason, I was strongly craving my mom's spinach dinner- also more commonly called ispanak yemegi in my family. But, in my attempt to cook more and learn more recipes, I decided to bake this spinach dish myself. Oh boy, was it a mess...Here is the recipe she gave me to follow: First, cook the onions and pepers with butter until slightly soft. Next, add in ground beef and then add chopped spinach after fully combining and mixing the ground beef with onions and peppers. Then, add rice, tomato paste, warm water, and salt. Finally, let cook until cooked.
Yes. As you can see, it was not helpful. As per her instructions, I followed the order to make this spinach dish. BUT what I couldn't follow was the quantity of each ingredient to add while cooking. I simply guessed on the amount of each ingredient and hoped for the best. I also had to guess on the total cook time because I personally can't tell when spinach is cooked and ready, especially because I've never cooked spinach before this attempt. Cooking spinach may be common knowledge for others, but I will admit that I did have lots of doubts in the cooking process.
Oh, and a cool little fun fact: spinach shrinks in size when cooked! Definitely a surprise halfway through cooking and absolutely something that caused a lot of commotion while I tried to prepare more spinach.
For all the trouble I had with this recipe, it definitely wasn't that difficult in hindsight. It was relatively simple- it had simple and a small amount of ingredients, there was basically no wait time, and the prep was pretty quick. Another bonus was that the spinach dish tastes really good! A note of recommendation for anyone who chooses to eat ispanak yemek in the future: definitely add a spoonful of classic, plain yogurt on top. Afiyet olsun!
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