Baklava is a well-known Turkish dessert that is a combination of all that is yummy - it's crispy, nutty, sticky and sweet. In short it's delicious and very addictive. Best of all you can easily make it at home just to your liking! And as much of it as you want;)
Ingredients
1 pack of filo pastry
375g of nuts (I am using walnuts, pistachios, brazil nuts and hazelnuts)
250g of butter
170g of sugar
20g of honey
100ml of water
1tsp vanilla paste
1/2tsp cinnamon
juice of half a lemon
Methode
Melt the butter. Chop the nuts into small pieces.
I am using store bought ready rolled filo pastry as making it at home from scratch is just too time consuming for me. I cut the filo pastry sheets in two, so I end up with around 24-26 layers.
Cover the filo pastry with a dampened towel to keep them from drying out.
Place first sheet of filo pastry into a deep baking tray and brush with melted butter. Place second one on top and brush again with butter. Place third one on top and repeat brushing.
On third layer of filo pastry put 2-3 tablespoons of the nuts - thin layer. Cover with another filo pastry and repeat brushing.
Repeat the process of 3 layers of filo and butter + 1 layer of nuts until you run out of nuts and pastry. The top layers should be at least 3 filo sheets.
Heat up the oven to 180oC.
You can cut the baklava into smaller pieces - as you want them to eat - before baking. As you can see in the video I was cutting it after baking and it brakes a lot. If you cut before baking the top layer will be very beautifully baked not broken:)
Bake for 25 minutes.
While baklava is baking, prepare the syrup. Place the water, sugar, honey, vanilla, lemon juice and cinnamon in the pan. Heat up and cook until it thicken up a little and resembles syrup.
When baklava is baked, straight from the oven you pour the syrup evenly over it. All the layers will be soaked in this beautiful sticky sweet liquid. Then you set it aside to cool down and for the syrup to work its magic.
When cooled you can take it out of the form and serve!
Enjoy!!