Recipe: Baklava

Baklava is a personal weakness of mine and one of the great hurdles of fat-free cooking.  Typically, when cooking with phyllo dough, oil is brushed between every sheet of dough.  If you are using 12-15 sheets of dough, that much fat can add up contributing even more to the great big health disaster known as the standard American diet.

Even though this dish has no added oil, it is a small-portion, special-occasion type dish.  It has a lot of sugar.  The phyllo is processed but you can actually find whole wheat organic phyllo dough if you are lucky.  Because of the large amount of sugar, this recipe is not tops on the list of nutrient-dense foods, but the phyllo dough technique I use is noteworthy as we learn to cook in new and different ways to leave all the fat behind.  

Baklava
14 sheets of phyllo dough (roughly half of a package)
4 C toasted chopped almonds or walnuts or both
2 T cinnamon

Syrup
4 C raw sugar
2 C water
1/2 C agave nectar
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t cloves

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Make sure phyllo dough is at room temperature.  It usually takes two hours to thaw if it has been frozen.

While the oven is preheating, make the syrup.  Mix the sugar, water, agave, and spices together in a pan. Turn heat on high.  Cook to a syrup state at 230 degrees.  Use a candy thermometer for accuracy.  Careful to watch your syrup at 212 degrees.  It will want to boil over so use at least a 3 quart pot instead of a small sauce pan.  Stirring quickly at 212 degrees should also help prevent much of this mess.

While the syrup is heating, mix the toasted chopped almonds and cinnamon.  Once the sugar syrup is done, turn off the heat and set it aside.

On a cookie sheet, lay one sheet of phyllo and mist it with a spray bottle.  Place cookie sheet in oven for two minutes until the phyllo sheet is golden brown.  Remove from oven and place on cooling rack.  Do this will all 16 sheets.  Yes, we are cooking each phyllo sheet individually.  I use two cookie sheets and the process goes much faster.  You will also never get a soggy baklava using this technique.

Place two baked phyllo sheets on the bottom of a dry 16 x 9 rectangular pan.  Drizzle your syrup over the layer to cover.  Then add two more sheets, and a handful of the nuts to cover the layer.  Drizzle your syrup over the layer.

Add two more sheets of baked phyllo, another layer of nuts and drizzle more syrup to cover.
Add two more sheets of baked phyllo, another layer of nuts and drizzle more syrup to cover.
Add two more sheets of baked phyllo, another layer of nuts and drizzle more syrup to cover.

Add two more sheets of baked phyllo (no nuts) and drizzle more syrup to cover.
Add two more sheets of baked phyllo (no nuts) and drizzle more syrup to finish the dish.

That's it.  No further baking required.  Cut into diamonds and sprinkle with a few nuts for garnish.

Enjoy!