Baklava Bonding

I was seized by the luscious photography and entrancing blog. Passionate about Baking is such a gorgeous food blog and surely the best place to start a Baklava experiment. I had booked a cooking date with my sister and felt slightly romantic about the prospect of making our own filo pastry as well as my favourite dessert.

I think her recipe was written in the first few months of owning a Thermomix, and have included my tweaks below. But I feel I should link to her recipe here rather than reproduce it.

The things I learned:
Indian women are much more relaxed about doing a lot of rolling pin work than my sister or me! Our puny biceps mocked us the whole time. So unless you see a good hour of rolling as therapy - I would buy your filo/phyllo pastry. Was it worth it...unfortunately yes! The texture and flavour of the home-made phyllo pastry was fabulous. I swore I would never do it again, but if the company is right...

You may want to blitz the nuts far more briefly than the recipe says. I don't know if there was a difference in the hardness of the nuts, but one lot of 4-5 seconds was enough for us.

You can definitely cook the syrup in the thermomix - my instructions are below. It was my favourite flavour by far. Deeba has got a beautiful balance in the recipe.

from Deeba's blog:

"Ingredients for Syrup:

• 150ml honey - 150g
• 150ml water - I changed this to 110g water for the TM
• 140gms sugar
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 pieces candied orange peel {or fresh}
• A few cloves or a pinch or ground clove {I forgot this}

Method:

1. When you put your baklava in the oven start making your syrup. When you combine the two, one of them needs to be hot, I find it better when the baklava is hot and the syrup has cooled."
2. Weigh all ingredients into the TM and cook 16 minutes, varoma temperature, REVERSE, speed 1-2.
3. Allow to cool as baklava cooks for the second 30 minutes (or until golden brown), and then strain through simmering basket - following the rest of Deeba's recipe instructions.

I must say, if we had not made our phyllo pastry, then this would have been insanely and dangerously easy!! Maybe there is wisdom in working hard for your sweets.

I will be making baklava many times from now on. Thank you Deeba.