The upside of the month of fasting is that it ends with fieker Bayrami, the three-day Sweets Holiday, when Turks countrywide visit their families bearing gifts of all things sweet and sticky. Most people have heard of Turkish delight but that’s not the onl

Confectionery has come along way since it was first used to mask the flavour of unpleasant medicine in the 14th century.  In Ottoman cuisine sweetmeats made from mixtures of honey or molasses and flour and water have been known since the 16th century.  The invention of the famous Turkish delight, ‘lokum’, is attributed to the confectioner from Kastamonu, Haci Bekir, who set up shop in Bahçekapı, Eminönü in the late 1770s.  At the time, the Ottomans’ favourite sweet was the hard-boiled candy known as ‘akide’.  The lokum legend tells of the Sultan crying out for soft candy as he cracked a tooth crunching into a hard-boiled sweet.   
Hearing this plea, Haci Bekir went to work mixing water, sugar, flour and rosewater, then hesitantly bit into the results. A soft, chewy morsel, named rahatü’l-hulkum, or lokum as it has become known in Turkey and Turkish delight in English-speaking countries, was ‘discovered’.  The cultivation of sugar-cane as we know it today and the discovery of starch in the early 19th century improved the recipe significantly, and to this day form the cornerstones of Turkish delight.
But lokum is not the only sweet that owes its introduction to the larger world to inventive Ottoman cooks.  Marzipan, or ‘badem ezmesi’ as it is known in its most delicious form in Turkey, was, in all likelihood, introduced to Europe by the Turks.  Originating in Persia, this delicacy was initially made by pharmacists, as were many sweetmeats, as they were believed to have positive health benefits.  Piflmaniye, a type of ‘fairy floss’ made from thousands of strands of sugar mixed with flour, is another significant Turkish sweet that also found its beginnings in Persia.  The heavy mixture of sugar syrup and roasted flour is skillfully stretched and twisted time and time again, the fibres getting finer with each turn until the bundle of wispy strands becomes piflmaniye. 
Whatever your sweet, the time to share it with friends, family and especially children and the elderly is Şeker Bayramı, the three-day orgy of eating that follows on from Ramazan.

Koska
Koska is one of Istanbul’s traditional delights, a Turkish sweet and dessert shop that tempts us with a delicious range of local specialities such as Turkish delight (lokum), jams, cakes, cookies, marzipan sweets and, my personal favourite, helva, a sugary caramel dessert that it is not hyperbole to describe as ‘heavenly’. The famous Turkish delight, which is sold in boxes of between 300 and 3,000 grammes, includes every possible flavour from lemon, rose, and pistachio to classic vanilla - none of which is easy to resist! The Koska website proudly boasts in jumbled English: ‘It carries this a century old taste of the future’. The company might not pass a language test but they have certainly got the creation of sweets and desserts down to a fine art!
Visiting Koska is as key an İstanbul experience as taking a red tram along İstikal or plodding round the Egyptian bazaar clutching your rakı T-shirt and fake fezes. This shop simply oozes old İstanbul charm as the plump, white-coated assistants give out advice on the best Turkish delight to try first. A 300-gram box of pistachio helva costs 4.6 YTL while a one-kilo box costs 8.75 YTL; a one-kilo box of double pistachio Turkish delight clocks up all of 13 YTL.
A walk through the hustle and bustle of central İstanbul would not be complete without a visit to Koska, which celebrated its centenary this year. Face facts – it’s time to forget your well-intended diet for a while. After all, you are on holiday! Chris Bird
Koska
İstiklal Caddesi No 122A, Beyoğlu
(0212) 244 0877, info@koska.com

Ali Muhiddin Haci Bekir
Hacı Bekir is a famous sweet and dessert shop tucked away on İstiklal Caddesi in Beyoğlu. It ranks as one of the very oldest of such sweet shops, having been established by one Bekir Affandi in 1777. The sultan was reputedly so taken with the Turkish delight that Bekir produced that he gave him the venerable title of Chief Confectioner to the Ottoman court. An English traveller who adored the ‘lokum’ then gave the sweet the label ‘Turkish delight’ by which it is better known today.
As you step in from the chaos and noise of İstiklal the tiny shop exudes an almost dreamily sweet atmosphere with lines of colourful jars full of candies and biscuits and trays of fresh baklava next to displays of cakes and jams. The wonderful smell of desserts and candies is mesmerising and unforgettable. The choice is quite literally mind-boggling, so plan on having to spend some time selecting what suits your tastebuds best! There are over 15 different flavours of Turkish delight on offer including rose, hazelnut, orange, apricot, ginger and coffee; a 300-gram packet of Turkish Delight costs about 5 YTL. The shop also boasts a mouth-watering range of candy-floss, jams, jellies, cakes, biscuits, sherbets, nuts and helva. 
The shop really has a feel of the ‘old İstanbul’ about it. Once you’ve tasted the delicacies on offer I’m sure you’ll soon be back for more! Chris Bird
Ali Muhiddin Hacı Bekir
İstiklal Caddesi No 127, Beyoğlu 
(0212) 245 1375, www.hacibekir.com.tr

Meflhur Bebek Badem Ezmesi
Time was when Turkey was chock-a-bloc with places selling cheap and tasty marzipan in great big piles. Since then, however, the bottom seems to have fallen out of the market – or the soaring price has put paid to the market – take your pick of reasons for the vanishing of marzipan from the shelves! Nowadays if you want to buy the fudgey stuff you’re going to have to look pretty hard for it, so it’s worth knowing about this Bebek fixture (here since 1904 apparently) which sells little else but marzipan. This is the real, quality item and completely delicious. However, like most of the good things in life, it doesn’t come cheap at a whopping 80 YTL for a kilo.
What else can you buy here? Well, there’s Mabel chocolate, which comes in a wrapper that depicts Mabel as a black woman in a red-chequered headscarf that, one feels sure, would see it whipped off the shelves as non-PC in Europe or America. Myself, I’m more fazed by the price – 4 YTL for an 80gr bar! If you want your marzipan at a cheaper price, you can always get it in the Spice Bazaar or at Koska (see above)… Pat Yale
Meşhur Bebek Badem Ezmesi
Cevdet Paşa Caddesi No 53/C, Bebek (0212) 263 5984

Beyoğlu Nostajli Cikolata
With their aluminium-style wrappings, the bars of chocolate on sale at the small kiosks along İstiklal Caddesi look like rip-offs, as if someone had smuggled them in on the cheap from goodness knows where. To assume that, however, is to make a grave error because in fact these bars of chocolate have a history stretching right back to 1924 and the start of the Republic. That, perhaps, explains how their purveyors can get away with charging an otherwise outrageous 3 YTL for just two fingers of chocolate; that and the fact that some İstanbullus appear to grow teary-eyed at the very thought of this treat. If you don’t mind paying over the odds for your chocky delights, they come in a choice of plain or milk, and with and without peanuts, hazelnuts and almonds. Oh, and they’re very tasty too… 
Pat Yale
Beyoğlu Nostajli Cikolata
İstiklal Caddesi No 69A