Baklava

Baklava with a twist

growing up in the UAE, I can never remember a time when we did not have baklava at our home. You could always find a tray of these bite sized golden sweets on our kitchen counter.
After moving to Mumbai....No more baklava on the counter (missing UAE ).
so what to do when you crave baklava in Mumbai..the simple answer for me would be - Make your own. Alas, live is not so simple, because we don't get filo pastry sheets readily over here. And as filo is the main ingredient in this Arabic sweet,  my thought and craving for baklava were put on hold for a long time. Until I thought of substituting the filo with, yes its true and i'm not mad......Spring roll sheets.
You see last year in Ramadan when i made spring rolls i found that these sheets are way too thin and absorb a lot of oil ( my spring rolls were practically filled with oil, ick ), so when i was thinking of a substitute for filo, my mind went to these ultra this not good for spring rolls, spring roll sheets. and I thought to myself, why  not try making baklava out of these.
the outcome, they weren't flaky like the filo, but the basic taste was similar, and for people who have not had baklava at all, or very few times, they really liked it. For me I still miss the actual baklava.
but until the time that I have the patience and confidence to make my own filo sheets (that's a bit too much rite now) I think these will do.

A tray full of golden delights

Ingredients:

for syrup :-

1 cup water

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp honey

1/2 a lemon, squeezed

1 tsp vanilla extract/ 1 tbsp orange blossom water

for baklava:-
1 1/4 cups butter melted
11/2 cups pistachios or walnut or almonds ( or can use a mix of all nuts)
1/8th tsp nutmeg
1/8th tsp cloves
1/8th tsp cinnamon
14 -16 spring roll sheets / filo pastry sheets

Method:

coarsely chop the nuts with spices and 1 tbsp sugar in the food processor or chopper. make sure that it doesn't get chopped too fine.

for syrup:- add water, sugar and honey to a saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat. simmer for fifteen minutes . add lemon juice and essence and turn the heat off. let cool

to assemble baklava:- take a springroll sheet and butter it generously and cover with another spring roll sheets, again spread butter on the top sheet.

add two to three tablespoons of your chopped nuts mixture near one edge of the layered sheet, in a narrow line. roll up the nuts into a tight rolls so that u have a long cylinder of rolled nuts. slice into 5 or 6 pieces ( 1-1 1/2 inch pieces approx). and arrange on a buttered tray. repeat the same with the rest of the spring roll sheets until your tray is filled. don't leave space between the peices, they should be more or less tightly packed.

bake for 25 - 30 mintues in a preheated oven at 180 degrees. should be golden brown. if required turn the pieces and bake for another 10 minutes.

pour the syrup on the baked baklava as soon as it comes out of the oven. let it soak the syrup and cool for atleast 1 hour before serving.

Something for those cravings..

these also gave me the idea of making Baked spring rolls.
I baked them at the same temperature as the baklava, and they turned out really good, without any of the extra dripping oil.