Category Archives: Baking
Birthday Baklava
When I visited my sister Jennifer last week, it was my brother-in-law Mike’s birthday. The tradition at her house is to celebrate not just on the day, but for the entire week. Mike recently discovered that he likes baklava. Jennifer had a box of phyllo dough in the freezer, so she thought we could try making a tray of baklava to kick off the week’s celebration.
My niece Rachel joined in on the action. We worked as a team. I laid down the phyllo layers, Jennifer brushed each layer with melted butter, and Rachel was in charge of sprinkling the sugary nuts.
I didn’t use quite the right approach when I cut the sheets to the right size for the pan. I should probably have cut the sheets in half instead of cutting off out the perfect size, leaving the remaining dough in skinny strips. In the end, we needed to use the strips to make enough layers. We saved perfect sheets for the top few layers, and the cobbled-together strips on the inner layers worked out fine.
A favorite thing about baklava is its syrupy goodness. The trick here was to slice the baklava into pieces halfway through the baking time. Then, after it bakes and cools for a while, the syrup is poured over the pastry, oozing into all the crevasses left by the cuts. This leaves a big puddle in the bottom of the pan, but miraculously, all the syrup gets absorbed into the pastry.
While it was time-consuming, making baklava was relatively straightforward. The hardest part was waiting 8 hours for the syrup to get absorbed into the pastry as it cools. It was somewhat miraculous that the puddle of syrup actually disappeared by morning. As a result, though we enjoyed this as dessert, but it’s also excellent for breakfast!
Baklava
Adapted from this recipe from Alton Brown and this one from Epicurious
Filling:
9 ounces almonds
9 ounces pistachios
2/3 cup sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground allspice
1 pound phyllo dough, thawed
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
Syrup:
3/4 cup honey
1 1/2 cups water
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 cinnamon stick
6 whole cloves
1 (2-inch) piece fresh orange peel
Heat the oven to 350F.
Place the almonds, pistachios, sugar, cinnamon, and allspice in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until finely chopped.
Trim the sheets of phyllo to fit the bottom of a 13x9x2-inch metal pan. Brush the bottom and sides of the pan with butter.
Place a sheet of phyllo in the pan. Brush with butter. Repeat for a total of 10 sheets. Top with a third of the nut mixture and spread evenly. Layer another 6 sheets of phyllo, brushing each one with butter before laying the next one down. Top with another third of the nut mixture and spread evenly. Layer another 6 sheets of phyllo, brushing each one with butter before laying the next one down. Top with the remaining third of the nut mixture and spread evenly. Layer the final 8 sheets of phyllo, brushing with butter between layers. Brush the remaining butter on top.
Bake for 30 minutes. Remove pan from the oven and cut into 28-30 squares (on a diagonal is nice). Return pan to the oven and continue to bake for another 30 minutes. Remove pan from the oven, place on a cooling rack, and cool for 2 hours before adding the syrup.
Half an hour before the baklava is done cooling, make the syrup.
To make the syrup, combine the honey, water, sugar, cinnamon stick, cloves, and orange peel in a large saucepan and set over high heat. Use a larger pot than you might think you need because it will bubble up when it boils. If it boils over, it will make a big mess. Stir occasionally until the sugar has dissolved. Once the syrup comes to a boil, let it boil for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and fish out and discard the cinnamon stick, cloves, and orange peel.
After the baklava has cooled for 2 hours, re-cut the entire pan following the same lines as before. Pour the hot syrup evenly over the top of the baklava, allowing it to run into the cuts and around the edges of the pan. Allow the pan to sit, uncovered until completely cool. Cover and store at room temperature for at least 8 hours and up to overnight before serving. Store, covered, at room temperature for up to 5 days.
visitandine {ffwd}
Who wants cake? On deck this week for French Fridays with Dorie is a simple buttery cake called Visitandine, named after the order of French nuns who created this recipe.
I’ll admit, I had near tragedy with this one. I decided to halve the recipe and make two small cakes in 4-inch springform pans. All seemed to be going well. I browned the butter. I mixed the butter with the dry ingredients. It wasn’t as thick or hopeless as Dorie indicated it might be. I beat the egg whites until they were stiff. I folded the egg whites into the batter. I filled the cake pans. I put them in the oven. Then, I went down to the basement to move some laundry around.
I came upstairs to find a burning smell. I turned on the oven light and looked in the little window. The oven was filled with smoke. Uh-oh. I immediately turned off the oven and opened it up to retrieve my little cakes. I also opened a window and turned on the fans. The source of the smoke was a puddle of butter that had leaked from the pan onto the oven floor. I hadn’t thought to put the cake pans on a baking sheet.
I was so disappointed. The cakes seemed to have such possibilities! They were partially baked, but not all the way. I hated to throw them out, so I just stashed in the fridge overnight while I figured out what to do.
Overnight, I was weighing my options. Do I bake the saved cakes through and see what happens or do I start over? As I was reviewing the recipe in my head, I realized why the pans might have leaked. I halved the recipe EXCEPT for the butter. That probably explains why it mixed together more easily than expected. With that much butter, it might also explain why it exuberantly oozed out of the pan.
In the morning, I cleaned the bottom of the oven and decided to try just baking what I had. If it failed, I could start over. It worked!
The cake was light though rich-tasting (must be that extra butter). I’ll have to try it with the proper amount of butter, but this is just the sort of cake I enjoy. It reminded me of the financiers, and also an almond-browned butter cake I’ve been making when I have extra egg whites.
Howard wasn’t interested in this one, so I ate some cake plain (delicious) and also cake with rhubarb compote spooned over it (also delicious, but not very attractive). I still have one more cake to enjoy. I’ll be making Howard some chocolate pudding with the extra egg yolks, so he won’t feel left out.
To see how the other Doristas’ cakes came out, check their links here. You can find the recipe here or in Dorie Greenspan’s book Around My French Table.
If you missed it on Facebook or Instagram, here’s a photo of Mardi and I enjoying a fantastic meal at Coppa, a tiny enoteca (wine bar) in the South End neighborhood of Boston. We had a great time meeting though we missed the rest of you. Here’s to more Dorista meetups in the future.
A Plateful of Happiness 