Baklava

Baklava is a Turkish sweet delicacy which tastes best when served at room temperature. This is a very sinful dessert and it is better to have a lot of crowd to enjoy them, as you cannot stop with one... It is fairly simple to make if you can find the pyhllo pastry and you have little patience and can handle them gently.

Ingredients
Almonds (chopped very fine or grounded to peas size) – ½ cup
Walnuts (chopped very fine or grounded to peas size) – ½ cup
Pistachio – 15
Butter – ½ cup (1 stick)
Sugar – ½ cup + 1 cup
Water – 1 cup
Cardamom Powder – ½ tea spoon + ¼ tea spoon
Nutmeg Powder – ¼ tea spoon + 1/8 tea spoon
Phyllo Sheets – 20 sheets (8 oz.)

Method
Thaw the required phyllo sheets in its wrap for 1 hour on room temperature. It comes in a box with 2 8 oz. set. Take one 8 oz. package from it and freeze the remaining another one.
In a mixing bowl, mix together walnuts, almonds, ½ cup sugar, ½ tea spoon cardamom powder and ¼ tea spoon nutmeg powder and set aside
Take a 9X13 baking dish (needs to be oven proof as we need to bake it) and brush butter generously
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C. If using a aluminum pan, then preheat to 180 degrees C.
Take a phyllo sheet and carefully put it on the baking dish, now spread butter on it again
Do the above step of putting the phyllo sheet and layering it with butter until 10 sheets are layered. Do not be scared if it is little torn… handle gently
After about 10 layers, spread the mixed nuts, spices and sugar mixture and again start layering the other 10 sheets one by one with butter in between
Once all the sheets have been layered, brush the top with butter
Take a very sharp knife and score the baklava, until the nuts layer is reached, do not go all the way through
Cut into the desired shape until the nuts layer and bake in the oven until the top is golden in color. It will take 20 – 25 minutes. It took me 22 minutes exact. Some websites say it took them 1 hour, but I was done in 22 minutes. Remove once golden.
While the baklava is baking in the oven, during the last 10 minutes, heat water and 1 cup sugar in a pan and bring it to 220 degrees F which is ½ string consistency. Add lemon juice and cardamom powder.
Once the baklava is out of the oven and cooled for 3 minutes and the sugar syrup is also not very hot, pour the sugar syrup over the baklava such that each piece has some over it..
The syrup will travel through the cut cracks of the baklava and soak it well
Garnish with pistachio and allow this to soak and absorb for at least 6 – 8 hours.
Serve on room temperature.


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