Turkish Delight - Baklava

It was my nephew’s birthday and I wanted to make some sweet dish for him. His family like cakes and it is always bought from store. I decided to make Turkish delight- Baklava.

Now, I have never made Baklava, it would be first time for me too.  Back in those days, for a new dish, we had to join the cooking class to learn it from experts. But thank goodness, there is U-tube – our guru.

I saw more than 10 videos of different ways that people made this dish, around the world. It was so easy.

So what is Baklava?

Baklava is a rich, sweet pastry made of layers of filo/phyllo dough filled with chopped nuts and sweetened and held together with syrup or honey.

I decided to make from scratch.

Made the Phyllo dough by mixing flour with salt, lemon juice, olive oil and water. At first it will be sticky but working on it for about 10 minutes will give a smooth dough. Keep it in fridge for some time.

Make small balls, I made about twenty.

Roll them to 2-inch diameter and stack them

Take a stack of three layers, with enough flour between them and roll them to 6-inch diameter

Separate one end and roll it over

Roll out the one layer

Unroll the layer in the greased baking dish.

brush the pure ghee over the layer. You can also use olive oil or unsalted butter instead of pure ghee

Repeat this process for ten layers, separating each layer, and laying them in baking dish and brushing each layer with oil

Crush walnuts and pistachio and spread evenly over the layers.

Cover the dry fruit layer with ten more layers of rolled dough, separating each layer with a film of ghee

Cut through to make smaller slabs

Ready to go to oven after evenly spreading a film of ghee

Bake it for 20 minutes

Normally people make syrup but nowadays syrup bottles are readily available and come in different flavours. I used mint flavoured syrup.

Pour the syrup generously over the baked babes.

Sprinkle the rest of walnut and pistachio mixture and serve.

 It is perfect gift to give somebody and my nephew loved it.