Baklava Made Easy...No Really!
By Anonymous in Food on Jul 5, 2005 2:01AM
With weekend guests, putting together a new computer, rearranging every room in the house, basking in the glow of our new dish network, and calming down dogs who would rather be constipated than go outside where there were loud fireworks, the Fourth of July weekend seemed like the perfect time for Chicagoist to create a really difficult dessert. And so, having foregone the mani-pedi we had planned for the evening, we decided to make baklava.
How, how in the world could we make this sticky sweet, almond-cinnamon-clove infused dessert we got at the restaurants in Greektown? You know it will be okay, but there’s no way it could be great. Well, spank our bottoms and call us Greek, because HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, was this dessert good. We know, because with the patience of a three-year-old, we slammed down two, count ‘em, two pieces before the pan had a chance to cool. Yes, it’s hard to believe we’re still single. But the other benefit? Not a hard dessert to make after all.
Baklava (adapted from a recipe from www.eatgreektonight.com):
16 oz. of ground almonds
2 t. of cinnamon
1/8 t. of ground clove
1 C. butter or margarine
½ lb. phyllo dough (may need to cut to fit in 9” x 12” pan, we used a pizza cutter)
1 T. lemon juice
1 C. sugar
1 C. thyme honey (available at Greek grocery stores)
2 t. vanilla
1.5 C. water
Combine the ground almonds, cinnamon, and ground cloves. And let us tell you, get the ground almonds. Chicagoist could only find slivered almonds at the store, and figured it wouldn’t be too hard to grind them…a rolling pin, a hammer, and a mortar & pestle later, we had it.
Butter the bottom of a 9” x 12” pan, and layer with 4 sheets of phyllo dough. On top of that, sprinkle a little of the almond mixture, then 2 layers of phyllo, the mixture, until you have just 4 sheets left for the top. Cut the baklava into squares (again, we used the pizza cutter), then melt the butter and pour evenly over the whole pan (you can see why this is so tasty). Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.
When you pull the cooked baklava out of the oven, begin making the syrup mixture. In a saucepan, combine the lemon, sugar, thyme honey, vanilla, and water. Bring to a boil and cook, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes. Pour over the entire pan of baklava and let set. You are apparently supposed to let this cool, but to hell with that. It was after dinner, Chicagoist was hungry, you do the math. You can either keep square or cut the square diagonally, so you can have two triangles, which looks nice. Chicagoist was too busy stuffing our face to care about the looks of the dessert.