The history of this sweet delicate dessert is complicated with lots of countries laying claim to its creation. The first variation of this recipe seems to appear in Ancient Rome but at this point it was made from thinly stretched bread dough and honey. The modern recipe appeared in the 15th century within the Ottoman Empire, this explains the many claims to the recipe as we can assume every country influenced and changed the recipe as they were conquered by the Ottomans. My recipe is for a simple, yet delightful baklava dressed in a cardamom and orange blossom infused syrup.
Makes: 15-18 slices
Prep time: 25 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Cool time: 1 hour
Ingredients
75g pistachios
50g walnuts
25g hazelnuts
100g butter
3 tbsp honey
270g ready made filo pastry
For the syrup
100g caster
100g honey
1 tsp orange blossom extract
½ tsp ground cardamon
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease a medium size dish
- Finley chop all of your nuts, they should resemble small chunks (not a powder or paste) you can use a food processor to do this is you have one.
- Mix your nuts with 3 tbsp of honey and a pinch of salt and set aside.
- Melt your butter in a pan and cut your filo sheet so they will lie flat in your chosen dish.
- Place the sheet of filo in the bottom of your dish and then using a pastry brush cover in the melted butter, ensuring none of the pastry remains dry. Continue to layer half of the sheets in this fashion.
- Once half of the sheets are in place, lie all of your nut mixture on top and press down to form an even layer.
- Continue layering the rest of the filo pastry as you did before, when you have used all the pastry take a clean knife and cut into 15-18 evenly sized pieces, then place into the oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.
- Meanwhile, combine all your syrup ingredients together and warm on a medium heat for 10 minutes to properly combine. You should be left with a sticky syrup consistency; however, it shouldn’t be overly coloured or caramelised.
- When your pastry has finished cooking pour the syrup over it and leave to cool.
- You can sprinkle some ground pistachios over to serve or just keep it simple. Enjoy!
#Accessibility (image description: on a black background we can see three pieces of Baklava, they are shiny and sticky in appearance, as they are covered in syrup. We can see the nuts within each piece they are toasted and slightly caramelised in colour; contrasting against the vibrant green pistachios that have been sprinkled on the top of each slice.)