Baklava
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup butter melted (might need more)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 lb Phyllo pastry sheets thawed
- 4 cups walnuts finely chopped
- 1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground cloves
- 2 cups sugar for syrup
- 1 cup water for syrup
- 1/2 cup honey for syrup
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice for syrup
- 1 stick cinnamon for syrup
- 4 whole cloves
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325ºF.
- Lightly coat 15 x 10 jelly roll pan with melted butter.
- Mix nuts, sugar, and spices, set aside.
- Unroll phyllo sheets. Place 1 sheet in pan, brush with butter. Repeat with 10 sheets.
- Sprinkle 1/3 of walnut mixture evenly over top. Repeat layers of phyllo and nuts.
- Cut top of baklava into diamonds careful not to go all the way through.
- Bake 50 minutes. Meanwhile prepare syrup.
- In saucepan simmer syrup ingredients for 10 minutes. Set aside, remove cloves and stick.
- Cool Baklava 10 minutes then spoon syrup over the top. Let stand several hours or overnight.
Notes
For a crunchier and less syrupy pastry, use half the syrup. Traditionally it uses Pistachio nuts but I prefer the taste of the walnuts. Another version uses macadamia nuts and Mango syrup. Another tradition is to poke a single clove into each diamond of baklava prior to cooking. However I have found this problematic with people unfamiliar with cloves mistakenly biting into them instead of removing them before eating.