Baklava

BAKLAVA 

Author: Marisa López Chicote

Baklava is a sweet dessert made of layers of flaky phyllo pastry filled with crushed nuts and sweetened with honey syrup. This sweet is Turkish in origin but each country and each home has their own recipe and secrets.

I will share my recipe with all of you.   

Ingredients:

• Phyllo pastry- find frozen phyllo dough in the freezer section 
• Melted butter or ghee
• Nut mixture- Almonds,pistachios, walnuts, hazelnut, honey, ground cinnamon,. You can change the nut mixture according to what you have. For example, you can use just walnuts or pistachios or peanuts, but be sure to have enough of whichever nut you use. And if you’re not a fan of cinnamon, you can omit that.
• Honey syrup- water, sugar, honey, and lemon juice. To infuse the syrup with more flavor, I add two more completely optional items, orange zest and cinnamon stick .

Elaboration: 

1. Preheat oven to 180 C
2. Make the Honey Syrup
   Place the sugar and water in a saucepan ( 2 glasses of sugar and 1 and half of water) and heat stove-top, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves. Add the lemon juice, orange zest, and 1 stick of cinnamon; stir to mix. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and let simmer for about 25 minutes. Remove syrup from heat.  Remove the cinnamon  and let the syrup cool completely (it will thicken a little bit).
3. Make the Nut Mixture
   In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade, add the almonds, pistachios, walnut, and hazelnuts. Pulse a few times to chop. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and add honey and cinnamon. Mix well to combine.
4. Prepare the Phyllo Pastry
   Carefully unroll the thawed phyllo pastry and place the sheets in between two clean kitchen towels. This will help keep the phyllo from breaking while you work.
5. Assemble the First Few Layers of Baklava
   Prepare a  baking pan. Brush the interior of the baking pan with some of the melted butter or ghee..
   To assemble the baklava, take one sheet of phyllo and place it in the pan (for this size pan, I typically fold my phyllo sheet in half, and it fits perfectly. You can also do a bit of trimming using a pair of kitchen shears). Brush the top of the phyllo sheet with the melted butter.Repeat this process a few more times until you have used up about ⅓ of the phyllo pastry, each layer being brushed with the melted butter.
6. Distribute some of the Nut Mixture.Now, distribute about ½ of the nut mixture evenly over the top layer of phyllo.
7. Continue Assembling the Baklava
   One sheet of phyllo pastry at a time using another ⅓ of the phyllo. Again, brush each layer with a bit of the melted butter.
   
   Distribute the remaining ½ of the nut mixture evenly over the top layer of phyllo.
   
   Finish the remaining ⅓ of the phyllo pastry following the same process, laying one folded sheet at a time and brushing each layer with melted butter.
   
   Brush the very top sheet of phyllo with butter.
8. Cut the Baklava into Pieces, Using a good sharp knife, cut the pastry into diamond shaped pieces 
9. Bake:
   Place the baklava dish on the middle rack of your heated oven. Bake anywhere from 35 to 45 minutes or until the top of the baklava turns golden and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. (IMPORTANT…Because ovens vary, be sure to check your baklava half-way through baking).
10. Pour Syrup. Let COOL. Garnish:
    As soon as you remove the baklava from the oven, pour the cooled syrup all over the hot baklava. Make sure you distribute the syrup evenly.
    Let the baklava cool completely (it’s best if you leave it for several hours, or at least 1 hour, to allow the flaky phyllo layers to absorb the honey syrup completely).
    Cut through the pieces you marked earlier.
11. And if you like, garnish with a little sprinkle of pistachio before serving and enjoying.

About the Author: Marisa Lopez Chicote is an event planner and mother of 5, living in Cairo and Muslim since 1985, alhamdullah. She loves travelling and cooking.

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