Episode 3 Sweets Made Simple

I'm Kitty Hope.

And I'm Mark Greenwood, and although we've been married for ever...

..our first love is sweets.

Oh, I'm going to have another one.

Over the last ten years, we've built a business devoted

to rediscovering the best of British confectionary.

Whether we're at home

or at work, we're always on the lookout for new and exciting treats.

Do you like it or hate? I bet you hate it. I love it.

And we never miss a chance to try them out on the people we love.

No.

But now we're going to show you how to make our favourite

confections right there in your own home.

With sweets, the possibilities are endless.

And it doesn't have to be complicated.

Learn a few simple techniques and you're on your way.

Making sweets is the perfect way to spoil yourself, family and friends.

And it's something that anyone can do.

This is Sweets Made Simple.

In this show, we're taking a look at sweets with medicinal roots.

After all, a spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down.

Many of the sweets we know and love today

originated as remedies for everything from sore throats to indigestion.

From soothing rose and pistachio Turkish delight...

It is so pink and soft and yielding.

..to Mr G's buttered Brazils, packed with antioxidants.

Look at that. Gorgeous.

Our full-of-fruit plum leather belts are perfect for kids' lunchboxes.

You don't expect it to be so fruity, do you?

That packs a punch.

And liquorice, an ancient remedy for just about everything,

finds a home in our salt liquorice caramels.

Our first recipe is for delightfully tiny meringues

with a flourish of white chocolate, rose petals, and rosehip syrup.

Rosehips are so packed with vitamin C that during the Second World War,

when fruit was in short supply, the Ministry of Food encouraged

people to forage for the berries and make rosehip syrup.

So this is our recipe for rosehip iced gems.

I've wanted to cook a recipe with rosehip syrup for ages.

It's full of vitamin C and nursed the sniffles of my childhood.

We're going to start by making the meringue.

Put one egg white into the mixer and whisk until stiff.

That looks just about ready to me now.

Now, I've got a very handy way to find out

whether this is truly stiff or not.

You all right? What are you reading? Oh, it's a book about sheds. Yeah?

Anything about sheds that we need to know? Oh, no.

It's just sheds around the world. Excellent.

I think that's ready, don't you?

Next, I'm adding in 50g of caster sugar.

We're going to add the sugar a teaspoon at a time.

Between every teaspoon,

make sure that the sugar is really dissolved into the egg white,

otherwise, when you cook the meringue,

the sugar will rise to the top

and you'll have a horrible sugary coating on the top of the meringue.

The sugar has now dissolved beautifully into the egg white

and we've got a lovely stiff mixture which is going to give us

the most glorious high peaks on our meringues.

Add a flourish of natural pink food colouring.

This is a paste rather than a liquid

because it needs to be quite thick because what you want is

a ripple effect, you don't want it to be all-over pink.

We're looking at something's that's like a raspberry-ripple ice cream.

That's all you need to do. Very, very simple.

Spoon the mixture into a piping bag, fitted with a small star nozzle.

Using a fine nozzle gives you delicate meringues.

Now for the fun bit.

Now, remember, these are iced gems.

These are little hats for pixies to wear at a midsummer ball,

so you want tiny, tiny, tiny little meringues.

They need to be about the size of a 10p piece.

Pipe round and pull up to a peak.

You can see how they're coming out so beautifully

and they've retained their lovely stripeyness.

That's because we didn't over-mix the colour into the meringue.

Try and keep an even pressure on the bag when you're piping.

Otherwise you're going to get air bubbles and you're not going

to get enough meringue coming out of the end of the nozzle.

See, when we started out with one egg white,

it didn't look like a lot, did it?

But it's amazing how many of these sweet little meringues it makes.

Place the meringues into a preheated oven at 110 degrees centigrade

for an hour and 40 minutes.

So, now my lovely little meringues have cooled,

they've come out of the oven and they look absolutely stunning.

They've got that lovely ripple of pink through them.

And the way to know if your meringues are cooked is that

they'll just lift off the parchment very easily.

And now for the rosehippy bit.

Break up 50g of white chocolate into small pieces

and melt in a bowl over simmering water.

While the chocolate is melting,

put some crystallised rose petals into a blender.

You can get hold of these quite easily on the t'internet,

and in good cake shops and some supermarkets.

Sounds a bit like maracas.

You don't want to grind that to a fine powder,

you want it sort of chunky, really.

We're going to add the rosehip syrup -

at long last, you say to yourself.

When is she going to put the rosehip syrup in?

You can use rosehip syrup or cordial.

Add half a teaspoon to the chocolate.

When I was poorly, when I was a little girl, my mum would

put me on the sofa with a hot water bottle and a blanky

and give me teaspoons of rosehip syrup

while I was watching Andy Pandy.

Mr G? Do you want to have a go at swirling some chocolate

and rose petals for me?

Love to. Come on.

I think your legs must have gone to sleep over there

in the last hour and 40 minutes. Ha-ha-ha(!)

Spread a little of the chocolate onto the base of the meringues

and dip into the rose petals.

If I was a fairy princess and I was going to the midsummer night ball,

I would definitely wear one of those rosehip iced gems as a hat.

You live in your own world, don't you?

Yes. I do. It's quite nice.

Oh, they are so beautiful.

So crunchy and rosy.

And they're still lovely and chewy in the middle.

Not only are these the cutest,

sweetest little fairy meringues you could ever hope to eat, but

they've also got a lovely zing of vitamin C with that rosehip syrup.

Ooh, I'm going to have another one.

If you had a sore throat or a dicky tummy in days gone by,

the pharmacists of old would find remedies in many of the flavours

we associate with sweets today.

From liquorice to mallow,

herbs and roots were mixed with sugar to help them go down.

We've come to The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret

in South London...

Wow, look at this place.

..to find out a bit more about the medicinal beginnings of sweets.

Hidden in the roof of an old church, the Herb Garret was used by the

apothecary of St Thomas' Hospital to store and cure herbs for medicines.

It has been here for over 300 years.

Oh, you need that. Look, it's a vigour tonic.

Do I now? We'll have you tap dancing.

It now serves as a museum to the history of medicine

and the herbs that we used.

What do you think that is? Have a guess.

It looks like wood shavings.

It does look like wood shavings. It's marshmallow. Is it? Yeah.

Have a listen to this.

"Whosoever shall take a spoonful of mallows shall that day be

"free from all diseases that may come to him."

Wow. That's a claim, isn't it?

Rose petals,

which we're going to be using later on for our Turkish delight recipe.

In olden days, if you were really, really pale,

they'd give you something like rose water, which is pink, and the

idea at the time was that it'd put the colour back in your cheeks.

It would literally give you rosy cheeks which I think is

really rather lovely.

There's a specific sweet we're very keen to find out more about

and hopefully Karen Howell, the museum's curator, can help us.

We've brought along something today that we know

has its roots in medicine.

These are the flying saucer.

These are a sweet that's evolved from a fine medicine practice.

The Victorian era had become very gadgety and so the idea is to

take rice paper and you make these little bowls, really. Yeah.

You form them with a little machine and you fill your medicine inside.

Tell us how this crazy medicine sandwich maker works.

That's a pretty good description of a flying saucer cache maker.

What you would do is take the discs of rice paper

and then with the little cup, you'd press into that.

This is the expertise of a real pharmacist,

and that makes you the little cup space. OK.

OK? OK.

So this is my medicine?

So this would be my liquorice or something going into the middle,

Yeah, you pop that into there. Oh, it's looking good so far.

Yeah, then you take your finger, for now, in the little bowl

and just dot it round like that.

It must take absolutely hours to do this. Yes.

Now what you would do is take another one of these. Flap it on?

Flap it over, that way. Like that and then flap this over?

Take the flap, that's it, and pop it over, press down.

I think you have got a little pochette there. A pochette?

Or a cache. Ooh, a pochette.

Aw, it's total rubbish. Total and utter rubbish.

I'll tell you what, I wouldn't have made a very good

turn-of-the-century doctor.

Obviously, making caches was a very skilled and time-consuming practice.

I think we should stick to making sweets.

Definitely. Back to the kitchen for our next medicinal treat.

We're going to make a soothing confection full of

eastern promise, and originally eaten as a cure for sore throats.

Say hello to our recipe for rose and pistachio Turkish delight.

Ooh, rose syrup. I love rose syrup. Give us a smell.

I love the smell of it.

Mmm.

I love the taste of it, and, of course, it's an amazing medicine,

and how clever those Turks are to put it in Turkish delight.

And in Turkish it means "throat's ease." Lokum rahat.

You are the most amazing man I have ever married. I know.

And possibly my favourite husband of all time.

Shall we make some? Yes, please.

This is a two pan recipe. First, Mr G is going to make the syrup.

Add 900g of granulated sugar to a heavy-bottomed pan.

A lot of sugar, but a lot of Turkish delight.

To the sugar, add a tablespoon of lemon juice.

And 340ml of water.

Pop straight on to a low heat and heat until the sugar has dissolved.

For the second part of the recipe,

put 175g of cornflour into a pan with a teaspoon of cream of tartar.

crunchy because what you want here is a really soft Turkish delight.

Then pour in a pint of water and pop the pan on the heat

and give it a really good stir.

I've got that on a low to medium heat.

You don't want to go crazy

because, when it thickens, it goes really quickly.

Oh, look at that.

Suddenly, you've been stirring for a few minutes

and suddenly the cornflour does its thing.

Oh, sorry. And starts to really thicken up.

If you've got any lumps and bumps left in your cornflour,

just get a balloon whisk in and give it a good old mix up.

When the sugar has dissolved in the syrup pan,

place in a thermometer and take the temperature to 118 degrees.

Any hotter and the Turkish delight will be too firm.

And we're almost there.

We've got the syrup in there just doing syrupy things and we've got

this weird and wonderful wallpaper paste in here

and the two separately look like they'll never come together

and make a marriage but they will in a bit.

Once the syrup reaches 118,

carefully combine it with the cornflour mixture.

It starts to look like a sea of icebergs.

Now, at this stage, it's quite conceivable that you

might have a bit of a panic on because it does look really,

really odd but it will come right.

Just keep stirring it until all the lumps have gone away.

While I have a sit down,

Mr G needs to keep the mixture on a low heat for a whole hour,

stirring the whole time!

I know it seems like a long time, but trust me, it's worth it.

Now it's time for the best bits.

We're going to add the rose syrup, about two teaspoons.

Next, just a smidgen of natural pink food colouring.

Don't forget you can always put a bit more in but you can't take it out.

So, a little drop in, give it a stir, see what you think.

Finally sprinkle in 100g of shelled pistachios.

I love pistachios, those little green gems.

The little crunch from the pistachio against the soft,

silken texture of the Turkish delight.

Oh, and they're a beautiful colour.

Give the mixture a final stir and pour into a lined tin.

It's like something out of a 1950s b-movie.

The Blob From The Pink Lagoon.

Leave in a cool place for a good few hours until fully set.

There's something so seductive about this confection.

It is so pink and soft and yielding,

that makes me think of full moons over the sand dunes. Harem pants?

Harem pants and the belly dancers and... Ooh. Shall we get dusting?

I just want to dust it and eat it. Let's do it.

Mix together equal amounts of icing sugar and cornflour.

This is called confectioner's sugar.

And this is very good if you've got something that's quite sticky,

like Turkish delight, and it stops all the pieces clagging together.

Cut into small squares and dust in the confectioner's sugar.

And, you know, you can go

and you can buy a round wooden drum of Turkish delight but the

absolute exquisite joy of cutting that piece of Turkish delight,

I cannot tell you how happy that piece of wibbly wobbly

pink Turkish delight makes me feel.

Well worth the effort.

Our next recipe is a great way to turn your favourite fruit

into a gorgeous confection.

It's tangy and chewy

and a perfect way to sneak fruit into your children's lunchboxes.

Packed with plums which are rich in vitamin C and K,

and full of flavour, these are our plum leather belts.

My plum leather belts are a cinch to make and a joy to chew.

They're full of fresh fruit and kids really love to find them

nestling in their lunchboxes.

First we need six plums.

Cut the plums in half and take the stones out.

Handy plum tip. You have that ridge that runs down the plum.

If you cut the other way,

twist and turn, you'll be able to pull the stone straight out.

You can make this recipe with other stoned fruit,

so whatever you've got in your fruit bowl, or what's in season

so you could use apricots or nectarines or peaches.

The whole point of this recipe is to get that sunshine

and that summeriness into your kids' lunchboxes.

Give them a rough chop and pop them in a pan on a medium heat

with 200ml of water.

Cover with a lid and leave to simmer gently until they are soft.

By the time that lid comes off, it's going to be juicy

and lovely and gorgeous.

So the plums have been cooking for 15 minutes

and they've changed not just consistency but colour.

It's like a tequila sunrise.

It's the most amazing, vibrant pinks and apricots and oranges there.

Beautiful.

To give the chewy finish,

we need three tablespoons of golden caster sugar.

This will give it a rich toffee flavour too.

The juice of half a lemon will help the plums keep their colour

and give it a lovely zingy flavour.

Get a potato masher in there to break down the plums.

I'm just going to mash some of those bigger lumps out of there.

I'm going to leave the skin in there because

that's the healthiest part of the plum.

Another ten minutes on the heat will get rid of enough moisture

then whizz the plum mixture with a stick blender.

Ooh, look at that.

That is now the most beautiful sunset colour and it's really,

really thick and fruity.

Cover a baking tray with some clingfilm.

I know you're going to think it's a bit weird putting hot

things on clingfilm or putting this in the oven

but I promise you it is absolutely fine.

But please do check that your clingfilm is suitable for this.

It should say so on the box.

I'm just going to pour the puree on to the clingfilm really,

really slowly.

There is no hurry.

If there's someone knocking at the door,

they can just stay there for five minutes.

Spread the mixture out so it's about a couple of millimetres thick.

At this point in time you'll feel like you've got too much

mixture and it's all going to flood off the sides of the tray,

but when we cook it, it's going to get thicker and thicker

and reduce and reduce and the flavours are going to get more

and more intensified so be brave, hang on in there.

Last bits.

And that's all there is to it.

We're going to put this in the oven for ten hours.

The best time, I find, to cook this is on a Sunday night.

Stick it in the oven. It needs to be no hotter than a kitten's breath.

And by Monday morning it'll be ready to put in lunchboxes.

If your oven doesn't have kitten's breath settings, 50 degrees will do.

Ten hours is a long time but you don't have to stand and watch it.

Spend some quality time tickling kittens or read a book.

This is ready now.

It's now turned into this amazing stained glass leather.

How beautiful is that?

Stick it on a chopping board.

When it's completely cool, cut it into 3cm-wide strips.

And I'm going to roll it up into little wheels of fruitiness.

Do you want a taste, Mr G?

You don't expect it to be so fruity, do you?

That packs a punch. It does, doesn't it?

You've got the lemon tang. Mm-hmm. And the plum tang.

And that little bit of sweetness. Gosh, that's really zingy.

Can you imagine the endless hours of fun you'd have

in the playground with that?

These plum leather belts are so scrumptious

they might not make it into the lunchboxes.

I might just have to eat them all myself.

From fruits to roots...

liquorice!

The ancient Greeks and Romans ate it to treat coughs,

Even Napoleon was a fan.

It was said to aid his digestion and cure his bad breath.

But we know it better today as a sweet.

We're going to see a chap who sells nothing but the splendid stuff.

Lucas Giuliani has been running his stall in London's

Borough Market for four years,

selling every variety of liquorice imaginable.

Hello. You've got the most amazing liquorice stand.

How many types of liquorice have you got?

Quite a lot. You know, if you like the sweet ones, I've got them.

If you like the salty ones...

The roots are fantastic.

Britain used to grow a huge amount of liquorice, with the area

around Pontefract in Yorkshire being the epicentre of production.

These days, most liquorice comes from Asia.

It's a very gentle taste, isn't it?

It does take a while to get the juice out.

You have to go slow at the beginning so you get the flavour out.

There's a real medicinal history around liquorice. It is.

It's used for a lot of infections.

It's also a very good anti-inflammatory.

So how do we go from that to liquorice?

You put the roots in a big pressure cooker. Yeah.

And you cook it for 18, 20 hours. Just water.

And then this is the end result once it's cold.

Do you have any salt liquorice we can try?

Absolutely, I do have a lot of salty liquorice

that can really blow your mind.

In Scandinavian countries, they love salted liquorice,

something we're not so used to in the UK.

And it comes in grades of saltiness.

Single salt, double salt and even triple salt.

I call these guys salty fish. Bring it on.

So this is double, yeah?

Oh, jeepers creepers. Wow, that's zingy.

Do you like it or hate it? I bet you hate it, I love it.

The initial salt hit is bang!

Yeah, then it gets slightly... And then it just goes away.

It gets sweeter.

Now, this is the powder which is incredibly delicious.

So that's the flavour of real liquorice right there.

Wow, that's amazing. So this is...

My cheeks are going, "Grrr." It's rich, isn't it? It's fantastic.

I think what I need is the powder because I'd like to take the

essence of everything you have here and dissolve it into my caramel.

Absolutely, thank you very much. Thank you.

I'm so excited to have such a good quality liquorice powder.

It's back to the kitchen to make some salt liquorice caramels.

To start the caramel,

place 225g of granulated sugar into a heavy bottomed pan,

along with 175ml of golden syrup.

It's a good muscle workout.

Next, it's 200g of condensed milk.

And 125g of butter.

Place the pan on to a low heat.

We need to melt the butter and make sure

all the sugar has dissolved into the mixture.

In goes my trusty sugar thermometer.

The heat needs to be increased slightly to bring the mixture

up to a gentle boil.

When the mixture reaches 118 degrees,

take the thermometer out and whip the pan off the heat.

Add a sprinkle of flaked sea salt...

..and two teaspoons of liquorice powder.

And, because it's brownish, I'm going to add a quarter teaspoon

of natural black food colouring paste to give my caramels

a more traditional liquorice colour.

Give the mixture a good mix with a wooden spoon

until all the liquorice powder is incorporated

and the mixture is as dark and glossy as a raven's wing.

Pour into a 20cm greased and lined baking tin...

..and sprinkle with a final flourish of flaked sea salt.

Leave to cool, and, when it's set, cut it up into small squares

and wrap it in twists of parchment paper.

These salt liquorice caramels are luscious

and sticky with a grown-up tang of salt.

And the perfect medicine for a sweet tooth.

Mr G just loves a buttered brazil nut.

I do, and even though they're covered in smooth caramel,

these brazil nuts are packed with anti-oxidants like selenium

which supports the immune system.

This is my recipe for buttered brazils.

Start by roasting 200g of brazil nuts

at 180 degrees centigrade for ten minutes.

I love making buttered brazils almost as much as I like eating them.

For the caramel coating, put 225g of soft light brown sugar into a pan.

This will give it a lovely caramel flavour.

3oz of butter.

Where do you think you are? 1947?

75g of butter.

Thank you.

Next, pour in 50ml of water.

And finally, half a teaspoon of cream of tartar which will stop

the sugar from crystallising

and give the brazil nuts a gorgeous, lovely, clear coating.

Pop the pan on to a low heat.

I'm just going to melt the butter and dissolve the sugar

and get it up to a gentle boil.

The sugar's now dissolved.

Just checking on the back of a spoon, make sure there's no crystals there.

If you can still see sugar crystals on the back of the spoon

then leave it on the heat for a little longer.

Pop a sugar thermometer into the pan

and take the temperature up to 130 degrees centigrade.

OK, so that's reached 130, take it off the heat.

You can do these individually but I like to grab a handful,

drop them into the caramel and give them a good stir around.

When you take it off the heat, sometimes the caramel's

a little bit too thin to give the nuts a good coating

so just leave it for a minute or two and it'll start thickening up

and you'll get a really good coat on the brazil nut.

Just look at the colour of that caramel, that's gorgeous. Glossy.

Beautiful. That's what you're looking for.

Place the coated brazil nuts to cool on a baking sheet lined with

either a silicone mat or baking parchment.

Make sure the caramel's coated as best you can around the nuts.

How gorgeous and inviting is that?

Do you know that brazil nuts...

come from Brazil? No surprise there.

But they come from trees that grow up to 150 feet tall.

And these little fellas come in pods of between 8 and 20 nuts.

So, just imagine, these pods, they weigh 5kg,

falling out of a tree from 150 feet.

Look at that. Gorgeous. It's a really simple recipe.

Lovely thing to do. It's extremely therapeutic.

They'll take about an hour to set.

So the caramel has set now on the brazils.

Look at that.

You can see the clear,

shiny golden casing of the caramel around the brazil nut there.

Perfect. Beautiful.

I think that's mine.

That's gorgeous.

Caramel's just melting away from the brazil nut.

Would you like to try one of my gorgeous buttered brazils?

Ooh, I'd love to try one of your gorgeous buttered brazils.

Good shot.

Mr Greenwood has long thought that the secret to happiness

is a glass of malt whisky, a roaring fire and a dish of buttered brazils.

He is not far wrong.

Next time, we'll be making sweets that are great to share with chums.

From our lemon and blueberry nougat, laden with blueberries

and crystallised lemon... Oh, look at that.

..to our gingerbread latte fudge which slips down perfectly with

a cup of coffee. That is really good.

And our cherry chapel hat-pegs with a craftily concealed

tipple of cherry brandy.

They are really quite fabulous.

INDIAN MUSIC

Helicopter ride to the hotel? Possible.

Have somebody play bagpipe at the airport to welcome you? Possible.

Whichever car you like, with Wi-Fi inside? Possible.

Can I get you a pink elephant? I'll try!

See, the Indian philosophy dictates that

anybody who comes to your house is not a guest, but he's God.

I'm a guest.