Attempting Baklava

I love to bake and cook! I just don't do it much - it's hard when you don't have your own kitchen, and working full time.  Weekends seem to be my favorite time to bake, more time to do it, not being rushed, etc. Well, I love Michael Symon, he is one of - if not, my favorite "celebrity chef".  He's hilarious, down to earth, and of Italian/Greek descent, so I figure if I'm going to follow any ones recipe for baklava, his would be a great one for that!  It was actually pretty easy, want to know how to do it keep reading (with pictures, although not the greatest because I couldn't find my real camera so it's just my phone, but it's something!)

The line-up of ingredients:

Unsalted butter, walnuts, honey, cinnamon, sugar, graham crackers, lemon, phyllo dough, food processor.

First I started with melting 2 sticks of butter (the recipe calls for four, but I wanted to use only what I needed, I ended up using about 2.5 sticks of butter)

While, the butter was melting I brought out my "Merry Christmas to Me" Food Processor!  Side note, I have wanted a food processor forever, but didn't need a huge one - I'm sure that eventually I will :).  Well I was at  Kohls' and Food Network, had exactly what I wanted...and in purple! Even better, I have been watching this and the cheapest I have seen it is 24.99 (Black Friday price) and three weeks later it was on sale for 19.99 and I had a 20 percent off coupon! I was super excited, and LOVE IT!  Ok, back to the recipe, I took 8 graham crackers broken into quarters to make 1 cup graham cracker crumbs, you can pre-buy them, but this works just as well.

The recipe calls for 1lb of pistachios and/or walnuts.  I didn't want to buy any more nuts, because we had an abundance of them at home, so mine is a walnut/almond mixture, they are to be coarsely ground.

Mix the graham cracker crumbs, and nuts together, add 1/2 tablespoon of cinnamon (I made mine heaping...sorry for the somewhat blurry photo)

Mix that in with the graham cracker/nut mixture, until well mixed! Set that aside. Now comes the fun part, the phyllo dough.  It really isn't hard to work with, it just takes patience.  Take a 9x13 pan, brush the bottom with butter, place 10 pieces of phyllo dough, buttering each piece before putting another over it.

Then place 1/4 of the nut mixture, place 4 sheets of phyllo dough - again buttering each piece before placing the next one on. Did I mention that this recipe had butter?

After the first nut mixture the pattern should go like this:

nut mixture

4 piece phyllo

nut mixture

4 pieces phyllo

nut mixture 

4 pieces phyllo

nut mixture

Then finish it off with 10 more pieces of phyllo dough - again butter on each piece, before the next - hence the 2.5 sticks of melted (imagine if I would have use the whole 4 - just wait until you hear the syrup - I'm pretty sure that I need to be walking the treadmill while making this.)

Once all of the phyllo dough is on - wait for it - top the last layer by pouring generously spreading butter, as if there wasn't enough!  Then cut 1.5 inch rows, then 1.5 diagonally - to get diamond shape, diamonds are a girls best friend.

I made sure that mine had plenty of butter, a nice shine to the top! 

Well since I didn't tell you until now to preheat your oven to 350 - now would be a great time to preheat - so make yourself a cup of coffee, and pat yourself on the back for getting the labor intensive part done!  Once the oven is ready bake for 1 hour or until golden brown.

While baking, here comes the "I contracted diabetes from making this" syrup.  

Since I wasn't great at reading recipes I messed up with my lemon juice and put it in the beginning and not at the end, oh well. Normally it would be put in after the mixture comes to a boil. 

In a pan mix 1 1/2 cups water, 3 cups of sugar, 6-8 oz honey (I estimated how much out of a 12oz jar)

Bring this to a boil and cook for 10 - 15 minutes.

Once cooked, add 1-2 tablespoons of lemon juice, except I didn't do this because I was the dumb dumb that added it at the beginning - oh well. (I learned that while I was draining some of the syrup off my baklava that I would pour it slower next time, because this makes a lot and will make it a little soggy, just watch it and use your discretion to how much.  The more syrup the sweeter the baklava, but also a change of a little soggy baklava too.  I don't know about you, but I'm not down with soggy anything.

The outcome - a gorgeous, yummy, treat!

In case you don't want to write the whole recipe down from what I just said, click here for the recipe. 

Oh and here's the bad news you have to wait six hours -minimum- to eat this, that's why I recommend making this in the evening, so that you can go to bed and not have to stare at it all day.  Of course with every recipe you have to "quality control" it, so I'm giving you permission to try a small corner or two, while it's still warm!

Kali Orexi (Enjoy!)