A traditional and constant feature of Middle Eastern sweets and pastries is the sugar syrup which is used both in making them and to bathe, soak, or sprinkle on many of them. It is either thin and liquid, or thick and treacly, and scented with rose water or orange-blossom water or both. It can be made in advance and stored for many weeks, even months, in a glass jar, ready to be used. The following quantities give the most common thickness.
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Bring sugar, water, and lemon juice to the boil. (The lemon juice is to prevent the syrup from crystallizing when it is cold.) Lower the heat, and simmer gently for 8–10 minutes, or until the liquid has thickened enough to coat a spoon. Stir in the rose or orange-blossom water and simmer for a minute or so.
Notes
Step 2
Quantities of sugar and water can be varied according to the degree of thickness required for the syrup. You can also determine the thickness by the cooking time. The longer it is simmered, the more it is reduced, the thicker it will be. It is only when the syrup has cooled that you can really know how thick it is (it appears thinner when hot). If it is not right, it can be thickened by further cooking, or thinned by adding a little water and simmering again.
Step 3
If used heavy-handedly, this syrup will give pastries the rather sickly-sweet stickiness which characterizes badly made pastries in pastry shops.
Step 4
When a syrup is used for pastries, it is added only when they are already baked, fried, or cooked. It is added very cold to the hot pastries. (The opposite view, that the syrup must be poured hot, has many adherents, but we in Egypt always held firmly to our own.) Either it is poured over them as they come out of the oven, or the pastries themselves (such as luqmat el qadi) are dropped into it for a few minutes, then lifted out, richly saturated.
