Baklava

Baklava is a rich, decadent dessert recipe made of layers of flaky filo dough, filled with chopped roasted walnuts, and sweetened with a sticky honey sauce.

I grew up eating baklava and it's truly one of my favorite sweet treats.

I've enjoyed baklava for as long as I can remember, but I never dared try to make it because I thought it would be too intimidating.

Let me tell you... not only was this recipe really easy to make, but it was strangely satisfying and turned out way better than I had ever hoped!

This recipe uses walnuts, but next time I think I'll make pistachio baklava. There are so many variations you can do to vary how this easy baklava recipe turns out!

What does baklava taste like?

Because of the honey, baklava is insanely sweet. It's one of those dessert recipes where one piece will truly be enough to satisfy.

The outside is crisp, delicate layers of golden brown phyllo dough. Since they have been lathered in melted butter, the literally crumble and melt away in your mouth.

The filling is small pieces of roasted cinnamon nuts. The honey syrup holds everything together.

This recipe gives you a little bit of everything: sweet, salty, crunchy, chewy.

Ingredients needed:

Baklava ingredients are actually rather simple.

• The syrup is made of equal parts water and sugar along with honey and vanilla. I always use raw honey and pure vanilla extract.
• Phyllo dough is what makes up the thin crunchy layers. You can buy this in the freezer section of you grocery store or you can make your own... but I haven't done that yet.
• Walnuts, butter and cinnamon make up the filling. Using a high quality butter makes all the difference.

Here's how to make it:

Let's get to the burning question you've been wondering: how to make baklava. There are a lot of instructions so it might seem complicated, but it's really quite an easy recipe.

1. First step is to make the syrup. To do this you'll gently heat the syrup ingredients on the stove and then allow the syrup to fully cool.
2. Next step is to toast the raw walnuts. I like to leave them whole while I toast them in the oven and then I run them through the food processor to chop them into tiny pieces. At this point you'll combine with the cinnamon and set them aside.
3. Now it's time to assemble the baklava. Phyllo dough dries out almost instantly so it's extremely important to keep the unused sheets with a damp (not wet) towel. You'll paint the bottom of your baking dish with butter. Then you'll lay down two sheets of dough, paint with a thin layer of butter, more dough, more butter, and so on. Do this until you have 8 sheets of dough on the bottom.
4. Now you'll continue the same process, but this time you'll be adding a few tablespoons of the cinnamon walnut pieces in between. Do this until you have 8 remaining sheets of dough for the top.
5. The top follows the same dough/butter layering as the bottom.
6. Here's the trick with great baklava: once everything is assembled, cut your pieces but do not cut all the way through the bottom layer. This will allow you to cut beautiful pieces once it's cooked, but the solid bottom layer will keep the syrup in the middle and not all over the bottom of the pan.
7. Bake until golden brown and then immediately pour the syrup over the top. This is the best part!