Wednesday 21 November 2012

Christmas baklava





Don't you hate it when you click 'publish' instead of 'save'.  Well, here it is a little premature but I think its time to start feeling all Christmassy! 

And what better way to get in the spirit than with this Christmas baklava.  Taking the same old traditional recipe and giving it a bit of sparkle - it's my take on a scrumptious mince pie. 

Made with layers of crispy filo pastry, tangy fruit mince all soaked in syrup and topped with crushed almonds!!!  What more can I say, other than it comes with a warning...this is only for the very sweet tooth. 

Try it with with cream or ice-cream.


















Serves 12

You'll need:
  • 1 Pkt filo pastry
  • 200g raw almonds, crushed
  • 5ml cinnamon powder
  • 1 bottle of fruit mince
  • 250g melted butter
for the syrup:
  • 1 cup water
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 50ml honey
  • 115ml lemon juice
  • 1 cinnamon stick

Method:
1) Before you start with the baklava, make the syrup so that it can cool.  Mix all ingredients for syrup in a pan and boil on slow heat for 10 minutes and leave to cool.
2) Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees.
3) Grease the Pyrex (I prefer to use a glass see through one so you can see when the pastry is cooked)
4) Mix the crushed nuts with cinnamon powder.
5) Cut the filo pastry sheets so they are the size of your dish.
6) Start to layer a sheet of pastry, brush with melted butter then spread some fruit mince over, then another layer of filo, brush with butter and sprinkle some of the nut mixture over.  Continue to layer, alternating between the fruit mince and nut mixture until you have reached your desired amount of layers - I did approx 8 layers in total.
7) Cut the baklava before putting it in the oven.  It can be tricky trying to get the perfect diamond shape, so it may be worth practising on a piece of paper beforehand.  Basically you slice straight vertical parallel lines, and then at an horizontal angle the other lines, to create lots of little diamonds.
8) Bake in oven for approx 30 minutes or until golden.
9) Take the baklava out of the oven and pour over the syrup immediately, its very important for the cooled syrup to be poured over the boiling baklava.
10) Leave to cool and enjoy with a cup of tea and some cream or ice-cream.

2 comments:

  1. Love this idea. Will be trying it out. Thank you for the inspiration.

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  2. Baklava a sweet or dessert what you say it doesn't matter. But everyone love this to eat. We all know that it's mainly Turkish dish but in Dubai it is mostly famous one. And thank you author for sharing your this amazing content about baklava. Also, if you have any interest for Dubai's baklava then you visit baklava where to buy best online baklava shop here you'll get all tasty baklava at a reasonable price.

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