Recipe: baklava

Baklava is one of the most popular Balkan desserts. It is originally from Turkey and is often prepared in my country. This is my favorite recipe and it is really easy so I decided to share it with you.

Baklava

Ingredients:

500 g filo pastry sheets

500 g walnuts (half chopped, half ground)

3 spoons of bread crumbs

100 ml oil for sheets

125 ml oil for baklava topping

125 g butter for baklava topping

Syrup:

800 ml water

800 g sugar

juice of half a lemon

Preparation:

1) Preparing the syrup

First you need to make the syrup because it needs to be cold to use. Boil water and sugar for 20 minutes, just before the end add lemon juice and leave to cool down. Cold syrup goes on hot baklava.

2) Preparing baklava

Grease 20x30cm bake tray with oil. Mix walnuts (both chopped and ground) with crumbles and cut the sheets to fit perfectly in the tray. Put three sheets in the tray and grease each one with oil. Fourth sheet that you put in the tray sprinkle with 3-4 spoons of walnut and crumble mixture. Fifth sheet you grease with oil and keep doing one with walnuts one with oil until you have 4 sheets left. Put one aside and grease last three sheets when putting them in the tray. Cut the baklava diagonally in the shape of rhombuses and cover with the sheet you have put aside before.

3) Baking

Bake baklava for 50 min. Preheat oven on 220C and bake it on that temperature for the first 10 minutes. Then lower down the temperature on 180C and bake baklava for 30 minutes before changing the temperature on 200C and baking it for 10 minutes before it's done.

Take it out of the oven, throw away the last sheet you've put on and pour cold syrup all over it. When the syrup is absorbed, you can cover baklava with the other tray for 10 minutes to be sure that the top crust won't rise. Allow to cool down at room temperature and then transfer to a refrigerator covered with aluminium foil.