50 year old, Greek institution Salona share their Baklava recipe in todays blog. Inspired by their family traditions this recipe will transport you right to the heart of Greece. Pair with our Greek Gods table linen for the full sensory experience!
One of the laws of baklava is cold syrup on hot filo or hot syrup on cold filo, we like the first method so let's prepare the syrup first.
The Syrup
Ingredients
300g sugar
300g water
2tbls honey
3 cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
1 orange zest
Method
Mix all the ingredients except the honey in a saucepan, bring to boil and simmer for 20 minutes or until the consistency is slightly thicker than water, once the consistency is correct stop boiling then add the honey.
Secret Ingredient - Macadamia Butter
2 cup of unsalted macadamia nuts
Method
In a blender blitz the nuts on high speed until you obtain a thick cream consistency. Chill for at least 1 hour
Baklava
Ingredients
1 cup of walnuts
½ cup of hazelnuts
½ cup of pistachios
¾ cups of icing sugar
1tbls cinnamon powder
125gr melted butter
½ packet of filo
Method
In a blender blitz the nuts into fine pieces then add the icing sugar and cinnamon, mix thoroughly.
In a saucepan melt the butter and leave to the side.
Open the filo package and cover filo sheets with a damp tea towel so as to maintain the humidity.
Take two filo sheets and brush each individual sheet with melted butter.
Spread the mixed nuts in all the sheets and pipe a fine line of macadamia butter in the centre of the filo and nut mix.
Continue sprinkling the nut mix over two well buttered filo sheets and roll into long cigars till nut mixture is finished.
Cut each long cigar into 6 pieces and place each piece horizontally making sure each piece isn’t touching so as to bake evenly.
Drizzle remaining melted butter over each baklava.
Bake on 135 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes in fan forced oven.
Once baklava is cooked and tray is still hot from the oven immediately ladle the room temperature honey syrup till half way up the horizontal piece of baklava, evenly distributing syrup slowly so as baklava soaks up the syrup.
Rest and serve with vanilla bean ice cream for a match made in heaven
