If you have enjoyed baklava at a friend’s house or a Mediterranean restaurant, you know how delicious it is. The problem is that going to a Mediterranean restaurant just to have a baklava is a pain and also expensive. If you love baklava, why not try making it at home? It needs a delicate touch, but other than that, making it is not rocket science.

Before You Start

Baklava is built around many layers of phyllo pastry. Finding out how to make this light and delicate pastry is not hard – the internet is full of recipes. What is hard is the actual preparation. It requires time and a delicate touch to keep the phyllo from breaking. Even in the Mediterranean countries from where it originates, people are no longer making phyllo sheets by hand. Instead, they are using packaged phyllo. It is as good as the homemade version and saves a huge amount of time and effort. Find a Mediterranean grocery or specialized food store in your area and buy the sheets from there. It is often available online with home delivery.

The Ingredients

• Homemade or ready-to-use phyllo sheets
• Melted butter
• Nuts for the filling
• Sugar
• Water
• Lemon wedges

The choice of nuts to use is a matter of personal taste. You can make pistachio baklava, hazelnut baklava, or the traditional Turkish baklava with walnuts. Or you can be adventurous and try new fillings that both chefs and home cooks are experimenting with. What about chocolate baklava?

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Also Read: Debunking a Big Deli Myth

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The Recipe

• For the syrup, boil 2 cups of water with 2.5 cups of sugar. Add a lemon slice. Turn off the heat once the water boils and let it cool. The consistency of the syrup should be one of medium thickness.
• Trim the phyllo sheets to fit a baking pan.
• Start placing the phyllo sheets in the pan after brushing each side of each sheet with melted butter.
• After 4 sheets, spread out an unbuttered sheet and spread the nuts on it. About half a cup of nuts should be enough, but this can be modified to suit the size of the baking pan and the phyllo sheets being used.
• Repeat the process 4 times.
• Create the final layer with 5 buttered phyllo sheets. No nuts are added at this stage.
• The total works out to 25 phyllo sheets and 4 layers of nuts.
• Brush the top phyllo sheet with some more butter.
• Cut the baklava into diamond shapes with a sharp knife.
• Place the baking pan in the oven and bake on medium heat till golden brown.
• After removing the pan from the oven, pour the cool syrup over the hot baklava.
• Allow the dish to sit for at least 5 hours to enable complete absorption of the syrup.

That’s it. Your homemade baklava is ready to eat.

A Quick and Easy Alternative

There is another way to enjoy perfect baklava. Just order it from a Mediterranean deli. You save time and effort and get to have baklava that has been made by an expert cook. It is an easy way to enjoy this great dessert. By the way, baklava doesn’t have to be eaten only with Mediterranean food. It goes with all kinds of cuisine. Don’t be scared of experimenting.

 

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