Baklava

It's that time of the month again....Secret Recipe Club.  This time we have been assigned Sids Sea Palm Cooking. I love that she takes pictures as shes going along like we do. She has such a wide variety of foods to pick from but I love Greek food so it was a very easy choice when I saw that she had made Baklava. Baklava has always been on my list of foods to make and I thought it was much harder to make than it actually was. There is no question that phyllo dough can be a little tricky to work with.  I ended up throwing one roll away as it was half frozen and broke everywhere was I was unrolling it.  It's good I had extras in the freezer. Even if the layer ended up not being in one piece brushing the butter the layers made everything come together. The hardest part was waiting 24 hours to eat it.  We only waited about 18 but that was enough for all the syrup to soak into the layers of dough.

Ingredients:
1 lb. walnuts, finely chopped
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
3 sticks unsalted butter
1 package phyllo dough (16 oz.) thawed
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
10 oz. honey
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:
Melt the 3 sticks of butter in the microwave.  Set aside until a little cool.  Finely chop the walnuts in a food processor.  Add sugar and cinnamon and pulse.  Set aside.  Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Brush the bottom of the pan with some melted butter to start with.  Put phyllo dough to cover the bottom of the pan.  Brush all over with melted butter.  Put another layer down. Do the same with the butter.  Do eight layers total of dough brushing with butter each time.

Put 1/3 of the nut mixture on top of the 8 layers of dough.

Now do another 8 layers of dough again brushing with melted butter in between each layer.  Add another 3rd of the nut mixture and now another 8 layers of the dough with the melted butter. Then add the last of the nut mixture. Top with 8 more layers of dough with the butter.  Now before it bakes you need to cut it into your squares or triangles because it won't work if you cut it after it bakes.  This can be a little messy but make your cuts with a sharp knife carefully.  After its cut into pieces put in the preheated oven and cook for 40 minutes until the top is brown.

While the baklava is cooking in the oven its time to make the syrup.  In a saucepan add 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar and 1 tbsp of fresh lemon.  Bring to a boil and then cook for another 10 minutes stirring once in a while to make the mixture into syrup.

Take off the heat and add the honey and vanilla extract to the syrup mixture.

When the baklava comes out of the oven pour over the top making sure to pour the syrup everywhere.

It will look like too much syrup but it will soak in.  Now let it sit overnight on the counter covered with foil so that the syrup gets into all the layers.

Enjoy!!



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