Baklava

Baklava – Greek Dessert

When my Mom and I took a Greek cooking class, we had a lot
of fun making the Baklava, but it didn’t turn out good.  The positive thing about this is we
watched the instructor make the mistakes and realized what could go wrong by example.  (She also made it correctly the
following weekend and sent us a sample so we’d know how it should taste, which
was wonderful.)

My husband and I tried our hand at the recipe for
Thanksgiving.  It’s a fun thing to
do but should be done by two people, because the Phyllo dough  (or filo dough – found in the freezer
section, typically by the pizza crusts) is used in many thin layers.

Ingredients:

For the Simple syrup (MAKE THIS THE DAY BEFORE AND LEAVE IT
ON THE COUNTER/REFRIG):

1 ¼ cups honey

1 ¼ cups water

1 ¼ cups sugar

1 (2-inch) piece fresh orange peel

Combine the honey, water, sugar and orange peel in a 4-quart
saucepan and set over high heat. 
Stir occasionally until the sugar has dissolved.  Once boiling, boil for 10 minutes,
stirring occasionally.  Remove from
heat and discard orange peel.  Cool
on counter-top.  After cool, put in
the refrig over night.

For the Filling:

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

6 ounces almonds

6 roasted walnuts

2/3 cup sugar

¼ cup water

1 pound phyllo dough, thawed

8 ounces clarified unsalted butter, melted

Heat the oven to 350.

Place almonds, walnuts, sugar and cinnamon into the bowl of
a food processor and pulse until finely chopped, but not pasty or powdery,
approximately 15 quick pulses.  Set
aside.

Brush the bottom and sides of pan with melted butter

Lay down a sheet of phyllo and brush with butter (it was at
this point that my husband asked, “Are you sure this isn’t paper?  It looks like paper!  I don’t want to feed my family
paper!”  It looks just like paper
and is thin like paper, but it’s dough).

Repeat this step 9 more times for a total of 10 sheets of
dough with butter inbetween each sheet.

The instructor told us at this point while "painting with butter" to "let your inner child come out!"

Top with 1/3 of nut mixture, spread thinly.

Put a sheet of dough down and carefully spread the butter
(the nuts make the dough want to break). 
Layer a total of 6 sheets this time with butter in-between each.

Top with 1/3 of nut mixture, spread thinly.

Top with 8 sheets of dough and butter.

Brush the top generously with butter and tuck the edges in
and add butter to them too.

Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

Remove pan from oven and cut into 28 squares – don’t cut all
the way down, just enough to make the grooves of the pieces.  (Our oppsy was that we cut the 28
squares and then cooked for an hour, but I think it still came out good.)

Return pan to oven and continue to bake for another 30
minutes.

Remove pan from oven and cover with cooled syrup
immediately.

It is best if you can make this and serve it the next day!

OK, what the instructor did that was incorrect was that she
made the syrup the same time we baked the dough.  Thus, both items were HOT… not a good thing, because it will
be soggy.  So, the instructor then decided
to put the syrup in the freezer (instead of refrig) to cool it quickly… but it
cooled TOO much and it turned the baklava into a hard candy!

This is not a difficult thing to make, other than it’s time
consuming with all the dough sheets to butter up, but it’s fun if you have
help.