How to make Baklava
My family's secret baklava recipe
combines layers of crisp fellow pastry soaked in honey and a cinnamon-scented
nut mixture with pistachios, walnuts, and hazelnuts. Baklava is a great
dessert because it's even better the next day!
New to making Baklava from scratch?
These simple step-by-step tutorials and tips will help you make the perfect
honey Baklava every time!
When you
grow up eating baklava at every party, you become a little baklava snob - at
least that's what I did. To me, nothing compares to homemade Baklava. Crispy,
flaky fellow pastry texture. Crunch filling. And hot honey syrup. This is what
I want in a dessert. Making honey Baklava at home seems like a big deal but
trust me, it's much easier than you think. This foolproof version will make you
like Greek Baklava Pro!
What is Baklava?
It’s a sweet
dessert made from layers of flaky phyllo pastry filled with crushed nuts &
sweetened with honey syrup.
What is the
traditional Baklava made of?
The
traditional Turkish baklava, also called Fistikli baklava or pistachio baklava,
is usually made from a simple syrup made of phyllo flour, finely ground
pistachios, butter, and sugar, water, and lemon juice.
You'll find many variations of this
beautiful dessert, from Baklava in the Middle East, where plain syrup is
flavored with rose water, to Greek Baklava with walnuts and a sprinkling of
cinnamon inside. This recipe tends to be Greek baklava, albeit with my own very
nutty Egyptian twist (it's all in a nut mix).
Can you use other nuts in Baklava?
Pistachios/walnuts are the most used nuts. I like to use a
combination of nuts and plenty of them! My favorite thing about this version of
Greek baklava is that it uses a mixture of three different nuts - pistachios,
walnuts, and hazelnuts with cinnamon, a pinch of crushed cloves, and
a sprinkling of sugar.
Nuts are
chopped, but for the perfect cut, they don't have to be very finely ground.
This Baklawa recipe is a bit towards nuts and nobody ever goes crazy about it!
But you can make this recipe completely your own and change the nut mixture to
your liking. Let's take a look at what happens in the Baklava recipe from the
beginning.
How Many Ingredients
of Baklava?
Ingredients
- Phyllo Pastry: Find frozen phyllo dough with
things like pie crust in the freezer section.
- Nut Mixture: pistachios, walnuts, hazelnuts,
sugar, crushed cinnamon, crushed cloves. If you want you can also change the nut mixture according to
what you have. For example, you can use only walnuts or pistachios, but make
sure that whatever nuts you use to have plenty of them. And if you're
not a fan of cinnamon, you can skip it.
- Honey syrup: water, sugar, honey, and lemon juice. To give the syrup
more flavor, I add two more optional ingredients, orange extract, and whole cloves.
How to make
Baklawa: Step by step
Instructions
Preheat the oven
to 350 degrees F.
Make honey
syrup
Place the
sugar and water in a saucepan and heat over the stove, stirring occasionally,
until the sugar dissolves. Add honey, orange juice, and whole cloves (cloves
are optional here); Stir to mix. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer
for about 25 minutes. Remove the syrup from the heat. Add lemon juice. Remove
whole cloves and allow syrup to cool completely (it will thicken slightly).
Make a nut
mixture
Put
pistachios, walnuts, and hazelnuts in a blade-equipped food processor bowl.
Cutting pulse a few times. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and add sugar,
cinnamon, and crushed cloves. Mix well to combine.
Prepare a Phyllo
pastry.
Carefully
remove the melted fellow pastry and place the sheets between two clean kitchen
towels. This will help prevent the fellow from breaking during your work.
Collect the first few layers of Baklava.
Prepare a 9”x
13” x2” baking pan. Brush the pan with some melted butter.
To assemble
the baklava, take a sheet of fellow and place it in the pan (for a pan of this
size, I usually fold my fellow sheet in half, and it fits perfectly). Brush the
top of the fellow sheet with melted butter. Repeat this process a few more
times until you have used about half of the fellow pastry, brushing each layer
with melted butter.
Divide some
of the nut mixtures.
Now, distribute the nut mixture evenly over the top layer of the fillet.
Continue collecting Baklava
Continue to
collect the baklava, one sheet of fellow pastry at a time, using the other 2 of
the fellows. Brush each layer with a little melted butter again. Distribute the
remaining 2 nut mixture evenly over the top layer of the fillet. After this
process, remove the remaining 5 pieces of fellow pastry, laying one layered
sheet at a time and brushing each layer with melted butter. Brush the top sheet
of the fellow with butter.
Cut the Baklava into pieces.
Using a good sharp knife, cut the pastry
into diamond-shaped pieces (anywhere from 24 to 36 pieces) to a depth of about ½ inches.
Cook:
Place the baklava dish on a rack in
the middle of your hot oven. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until the top of the
baklava is golden and the skewer inserted in the middle is clean.
Pour the syrup Let cool. Garnish:
You remove
the baklava from the oven as soon as, pour the cold syrup over the hot baklava.
Make sure you distribute the syrup evenly. Allow the baklava to cool completely
(preferably if you leave it for several hours, or at least 1 hour, to allow the
flaky phyllo layers to absorb the honey syrup completely). Cut out the pieces
you marked earlier. And if you like, garnish with a slice of pistachio before
serving.
Frequently Asked Question (FAQ)
What is the
traditional Baklava made of?
The
traditional Turkish baklava, also called fistikli baklava or pistachio baklava,
is usually made from a simple syrup made of phyllo flour, finely ground
pistachios, butter, sugar, water, and lemon juice.
What is the
difference between Turkish and Greek Baklava?
The most
obvious difference between Greek and Turkish baklava is the ingredients in
their syrup. Greek baklava syrup is made from honey, while Turkish baklava
syrup is made from sugar, lemons, and water. Therefore, Turkish baklava is more
crunchy because the light syrup is poured on hot baklava.
Is Baklava
Greek or Turkish dessert?
Origin and
history of Baklava
Although
dessert is often associated with Greek restaurants and delicacies, it cannot be
traced back to a particular country. The modern Baklava may have been invented
in Turkey during the Ottoman Empire, then modified in Greece.
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