Baklava is a flaky, sweet, nutty, wonderful treat. It is made out of sheets of phyllo dough, butter, and a mixture of nuts, you can usually use any set of nuts you have. It is topped with a honey syrup to hold everything together and keep it moist for days, sometimes even all week. I modified this recipe from someone's family traditional recipe. Check out their blog for more helpful tips on baking baklava!
Pull Together:
Filling -
12 oz walnuts, coarsely chopped
6 oz pecans, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup of sugar
1 tbsp of ground cinnamon
16-oz package phyllo dough, thawed
2 sticks of unsalted butter melted
Honey Syrup -
3/4 of cup sugar
1 cup of cold water
1 cup of honey
1 orange peel
Juice of 1 lemon
Steps:
1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Prepare the honey syrup. Place the sugar and water in a saucepan and heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves. Add the honey and orange peel, stir to mix. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and let simmer for about 25 minutes. Remove syrup from heat and let the mixture cool. Add lemon juice and remove the orange peel.
3. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade, add walnuts and pecans. Pulse a few times to chop. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and add sugar and cinnamon. Mix well to combine.
4. 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. Assembly: Prepare a 9”x 13”x 2” baking pan. Brush the interior of the baking pan with some of the melted butter. 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 1/3 of the phyllo pastry, each layer being brushed with the melted butter.
6. 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 1/3 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 1/3 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 using a very sharp knife, into 24-36 triangular pieces.
9. Bake for 35-45 minutes. Check on it periodically as all ovens are different. Once you remove the baklava from the oven, pour over the cooled honey syrup, top with leftover nut mixture for decoration.
10. Allow the baklava to sit for at least an hour before cutting into the same lines as marked previously. Enjoy!
Looks fabulous!