Which Turkish syrup-soaked pastry is made from fried choux dough? The answer is Tulumba.
Tulumba is made by piping unleavened choux pastry dough into short ridged pieces, usually through a star-shaped pastry nozzle. The dough is deep-fried until golden and then soaked in a sweet syrup, allowing the crisp exterior and airy interior to absorb the syrup.
The dessert is associated with Turkish cuisine but is also widespread across the Balkans, the Levant, Egypt, Greece, and other regions once connected to the Ottoman culinary world. Its Turkish name means “pump,” a reference to the pastry’s shape and its reported derivation from the Italian word tromba, meaning trumpet.
Tulumba is often confused with lokma, but the dough differs: lokma is generally made from a leavened dough, while tulumba uses choux-style dough. Baklava is made from layered pastry, and şekerpare is a baked semolina-based sweet, so neither matches the fried-choux description.