Baklava

baklava-top

This recipe is not for the faint of heart, or for the diabetics. However, apart from being extremely sweet, the flavours are really nice. Strange how you can still recognize the subtlety of cinnamon, cloves, and lime zest despite the shocking amounts of sugar.

I took the recipe from the trusty book Michel Roux’s Pastry, but I was not crazy enough to make my own filo pastry, so I cheated with the store-bought pastry.

I made this as part of a weekend cooking extravaganza with a friend, and I managed to convince her to take it all home. I don’t need no temptation in my house.

Baklava

  • Servings: many
  • Difficulty: a little effort
  • Print

Ingredients

  • 16 sheets of filo, as large as your dish (I used a 33 x 23 x 5 cm dish)
  • 400 g pistachios, without shells
  • 60 g caster sugar
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 140 g butter, melted and cooled
For the syrup
  • 250 mL clear honey, equivalent to 340 g honey1
  • 80 g caster sugar, because we don’t have enough sugar yet
  • paired zest of 1 lime
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 2 cloves

Procedure

  1. Line your dish with baking paper. Blitz the nuts, the sugar, and the cinnamon in a food processor, until they are coarsely chopped.
  2. Preheat the oven to 170˚C. Brush 6 sheets of filo pastry with butter and lay one on top of another in the dish. Top with half of the nut mixture. Brush another 4 sheets of filo with butter and lay them over the pistachios. Top with the rest of the pistachios mixture and put the remaining 6 sheets of filo, brushed with butter, on top. Using a very sharp knife, cut the baklava into diamond shapes, cutting right through the layers.
  3. Bake the baklava for 15 min, then lower the oven temperature to 150˚C and bake for a further 30 min.
  4. To make the syrup, put 160 mL of water in a heavy-based saucepan with the honey, sugar, lemon zest, and the spices. Heat slowly to dissolve the sugar, then simmer for about 20 minutes until thick enough to lightly coat the back of a spoon. Strain through a sieve.
  5. When baklava is baked, let stand for 15 min and then pour the syrup over the baklava.
  6. Leave to stand for at least 12 hours (and up to 24 hours) before serving.
  7. Enjoy with some bitter coffee or tea.

  1. Yes, you read that right: three hundred and forty grams

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