Baklava
A rich, sweet pastry made with layers of phyllo pastry filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with a honey and lemon syrup. Serve with whipped cream and top with chopped nuts.
Ingredients:
- 400g phyllo pastry
- 350g butter
- 400g finely chopped almonds or walnuts
- 50g sugar
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp. ground cloves
Syrup
- 375g sugar
- 240ml honey
- the juice of 1 lemon
- 360ml water
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 170C and butter two 20 x 28cm baking tins. Use tins that are about 5cm deep.
- In a mixing bowl, mix together walnuts or almonds (or half and half), sugar, cinnamon and cloves.
- Butter 4 pieces of phyllo pastry and place in the buttered tin one on top of the other, trimming any excess if necessary. Make sure you keep the unbuttered pastry covered with a damp cloth.
- Sprinkle the 4 sheets of pastry with a thin layer of the nut mixture.
- Butter two more pastry sheets and place over the top of the nut mixture. Repeat in the same manner until all the ingredients have been used, ending with 4 pastry sheets.
- Brush the top with butter and trim any edges with sharp knife.
- Cut diagonal lines the length of the tin to make diamond shaped pieces then sprinkle with water and bake for about 1 hour or until golden.
- 10 Minutes before the end of the cooking time, place the honey, water, sugar and lemon juice in a large saucepan, bring to the boil, and continue to boil for about 5 minutes.
- Remove the cooked baklava from the oven and pour the hot syrup evenly over the hot pastry and allow to stand for 30 minutes to cool a little, then re-cut the diamonds. Serve warm or at room temperature. ( Makes 36 pieces )
February 3rd, 2011 at 11:31 pm
I made this the other night using this recipe and it was amazing! The family enjoyed it as well but I don’t think they liked it as much as I did!